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4:20 p.m
Generation Z is also turning away from drugs
by Josiah Gogarty
Snoop Dogg performs in Glasgow earlier this year. Photo credit: Getty
Last Friday, rapper Snoop Dogg made a serious announcement. “After much thought and discussion with my family, I have decided to quit smoking,” the rapper posted on social media. “Please respect my privacy at this time.” The terse seriousness of the statement could certainly sound ironic: Perhaps Snoop, already a serial weed entrepreneur, is in the process of bringing a smokeless product to market, such as a marijuana vaporizer or an edible.
But many people have certainly quit smoking weed. ONS data from last year shows that 16.2% of British 16 to 24-year-olds have smoked cannabis in the last 12 months – a fall from 28% around 25 years earlier. This trend is mainly due to youth: the decline is less pronounced among those aged 16 to 59, from 10% to 7.4%.
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Weed’s cultural power has also waned. Classic stoner comedies of the day, like the ’70s and ’80s flicks by American duo Cheech and Chong, instilled in us the archetype of the laid-back, snack-loving smoker. Nowadays the drug is treated as one among many. Guy Ritchie’s 2019 film “The Gentleman,” about an American-born cannabis king looking to retire, doesn’t make much of his chosen product other than a half-hearted statement about the state – he grows his crop on the estates insolvent aristocrats.
The drug was once a low-risk form of rebellion. It was illegal, but it wouldn’t particularly upset you. That has changed – and not just in the USA, where it is completely legal in 24 states. In the UK, medicinal weed is legal in certain circumstances, while CBD oil, which isolates the therapeutic compound from marijuana, is available from any high street health food store. But the weed you get from dealers can hardly be called a soft drug: Skunk, bred for high levels of psychoactive THC and linked to psychosis in several studies, now accounts for 94% of cannabis seizures by police responsible. Weed has become less of an uncool drug and more of a background drug, taken in high-profile medical forms or as an amazing palliative of poverty.
Instead, other substances have jumped into the spirit of the times. Nitrous oxide – or nitrous oxide or “nos” or “hippy crack” in tabloid parlance – was taken by 9% of 16- to 24-year-olds in the late 2010s. Vendors hung around club entrances selling balloons of the stuff to departing patrons, as ubiquitous as ushers with trays of ice cream during theater breaks. Even then, usage has fallen to 4%, and it was banned in the UK earlier this month.
To some extent, weed and, in a less gentle way, acid and ecstasy represented utopian summers of love. That optimism is alien to young people today: a January study by the Prince’s Trust found that the overall well-being of 16- to 25-year-olds in the UK was at its lowest level since research began 14 years ago, largely due to economic pressures is attributable. This has polarizing effects. Some people “quietly give up” and settle for the bare minimum, while others are driven by fear. Maybe it’s a sign that Generation Z sees no alternative to getting ahead. The stoner’s relaxed life has gone up in smoke.