MAGA Should Not Enable Stoner Culture

I’m not a big gambler; it’s one of the few vices  I’ve never acquired. So what I was most excited to do on a recent trip to Las Vegas was to engage in a pleasure stolen by liberal technocracy: smoking a cigarette indoors. It wasn’t until I stepped out of the hotel elevator into a haze of pungent pot smoke that I realized the “smoking floor” was no longer really meant for cigarettes.

Marijuana usage is now largely normalized, if not fully legalized, in most states. Thus far, legalization has been a progressive cause, one cheered by both Democratic Socialist urbanites and their aging hippie grandparents. Yet President Trump has now reportedly hinted at his own willingness to “look at” reclassifying marijuana from a Schedule I drug to a far less restrictive Schedule III status.

This would be a mistake of a kind that Republicans seem to make perpetually. Pandering to a group who hates everything MAGA stands for will never pay political dividends, but it could bring the stoner sensibility more thoroughly into mainstream American life.

Nevada is just one of the 24 states (not including D.C.) to have legalized recreational marijuana since 2012, with most others decriminalizing or medically administering it. Despite the progressive establishment’s insistence to the contrary, there are many well-worn externalities to pot usage. Alex Berenson’s landmark investigation compiled decades of studies showing that marijuana is, in fact, a gateway drug linked to medical psychosis, which has few legitimate medical applications. One has only to walk outside in any blue city to realize what a public nuisance the ubiquitous stench has become. So why is Trump, who famously doesn’t even drink alcohol, boarding the pot bandwagon?

From the point of view of pot advocates, Trump took an optimistic stance on the question in the run-up to the 2024 election, pledging to

focus on research to unlock the medical uses of marijuana to a Schedule 3 drug, and work with Congress to pass common-sense laws, including safe banking for state authorized companies, and supporting states’ rights to pass marijuana laws … that work so well for their citizens.

In the middle of a hotly contested election, perhaps this was a somewhat defensible position for Trump to take, especially since Joe Biden got the ball rolling by advocating rescheduling the drug during his tenure. But the demographic groups favoring legalization predictably failed to make their gratitude known at the ballot box.

Black America has a well-known affinity for marijuana; just try finding a hip-hop song in the last 30 years that doesn’t mention it. Despite emphasis on “opportunity zones” and rap star endorsements, Trump’s share of the black vote only shifted marginally between 2020 and 2024.

Pot is also famously associated with youth culture; studies show that almost 70 percent of Americans ages 18-24 prefer smoking weed to drinking alcohol. While Trump made more significant inroads with young voters, the gains came mostly from young men after a whirlwind campaign tour across the so-called podcast manosphere. As for their Boomer grandparents, the generation raised on Woodstock and campus riots, Trump saw only a two point shift between 2020 and 2024.

Marijuana may be a pet cause for Democrats, but it’s simply not a winning issue for the right. Indeed, this is one promise that Trump should forget about. Generational black Democrats, young urbanites from Williamsburg to West Hollywood, and hippies who have been stoned for the past 50 years are already predisposed to despise Trump for various other reasons, as they’ve made clear in the last three election cycles. No amount of pandering to this dirty little vice is ever going to change that.

What it will do, however, is solidify the pervasiveness of pot culture. As marijuana becomes the new drug of choice for the American people, recreational pot shops that already dot downtown areas across the country, will multiply despite lingering federal banking restrictions. Doctors already prescribe “medical marijuana” for virtually any pretense, despite Schedule I classification. Teenagers’ abuse of the drug has increased a whopping 245 percent over the last two decades, while Americans report new highs of depression, anxiety, and loneliness.

All of this occurred while Republicans stood, mostly impotently, in the breach yelling “stop!” But with Republicans increasingly favoring less restrictive classification, the prevalence of pot, along with its abuses, will only get worse. Where will we be once MAGA and progressives effectively accede to the same premise: that pot is basically fine, and should be brought further into the mainstream of society? Far from making stoner subculture more respectable and bourgeois, our broader culture is likely to become more like this stoner subculture.

Just look at the evolution of LGBT issues: Republicans, along with a two-thirds majority of America, resisted gay marriage even as progressives insisted gay couples were the same as everyone else, only to be overruled by the Supreme Court. Eventually, Republicans stopped resisting and started pandering. What has been the result? Despite some Gays for Trump outreach, the driving pulse of the LGBT community remains decidedly hostile.

Today, it’s rare to see any notable Republican come out against gay marriage. Yet those seeking the mirage of the conservative gay couple behind a white picket fence are much more likely to bump up against the reality of a drag show at a public children’s library. And with heterosexual dating largely confined to impersonal hook-up apps like Tinder, even straight couples are pairing off like gays on Fire Island.

In other words, both the right and the left have accepted the same basic premise—bringing gay culture to the mainstream—and with no one representing the alternative view, public resistance has cratered as well. Over two-thirds of Americans now support gay marriage, including a near majority of Republicans. Winding back the clock to a cultural status quo ante is all but unthinkable.

You don’t have to be a prude to believe that most grudgingly accepted vices do not deserve and should not be given full social sanction. After all, most of the fun of smoking weed as a kid comes from the fact that you know you’re not supposed to do it. Just because I enjoy an occasional cigarette in bed doesn’t mean I’m obliged to walk through a crowd of stoned out zombies just to get to dinner.

https://chroniclesmagazine.org/web/maga-should-not-enable-stoner-culture