I just had the conspiratorial thought that marijuana has had such a hard fight for legalization because it is a cheaper, less addictive alternative to opioids and that hurts big pharma.
It’s probably racism.
More than likely, especially considering that Marijuana simply isn’t near as effective an analgesic as most if not all opioids.
Except that opioids treat things that cannabis literally cannot touch. I’m all about legalization for a variety of management uses, but there are pain disorders out there that can only be treated effectively with Big Pharma Science.
My mistake, the context I intended to mean was “casual, nonmedical, (and usually illegal) drug use” IE the vices one resorts to to cope with capitalist alienation. So yeah, huge racial component to that, but it’s not like there isn’t a huge amount of opiate abuse within white communities, poor and rich alike, as well.