Does “making America healthy again” mean the federal legalization of marijuana? Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose hearings to be confirmed as the next secretary of Health and Human Services took place this week, seems to think so.

When Kennedy was running for president as an independent, he released an ad noting that he wanted to legalize pot and use the proceeds to help end addiction. He said he would build “renewal centers of detoxification” that will help address “the rise of mental illness and PTSD and drug addiction that is debilitating our children.”

If states are supposed to be laboratories of democracy, then it’s time we report results from the experiment with legalization on the state level. Legalization and the not-unrelated widespread cultural acceptance of cannabis has led to an extraordinary rise in its use as well as in its tragic consequences. Daily use of cannabis is now more common than daily alcohol use. The potency of the product has gone through the roof. Smoking pot in the 1970s and ‘80s meant you were using a product with 3% or 4% potency. Now it’s closer to 30-40% and some of the products on the market have up to 90%.

And the results have been devastating. A New York Times article in the fall noted that “from Washington State to West Virginia, psychiatrists treat rising numbers of people whose use of the drug has brought on delusions, paranoia and other symptoms of psychosis.”

In emergency rooms, too, the article said, “Physicians encounter patients with severe vomiting induced by the drug — a potentially devastating condition that once was rare, but now, they say, is common.” About 18 million people (a third of all users 18 and up) can be said to have a cannabis use disorder, meaning that their use is having a negative impact on their lives and they continue to use anyway.

But it is the kids who are suffering most. Not only is cannabis use interfering with adults’ ability to parent, but kids themselves are using in order to self-medicate for anxiety, depression and a variety of other mental health challenges. They have gotten the idea that cannabis may actually be good for them.

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Not only do companies advertise weed as organic, but legal dispensaries say their product has powerful medical benefits. The claims include that it can fight cancer and help those with glaucoma, bacterial infections and Huntington’s Disease, according to a recent Times investigation. But who is surprised by this? Those who wanted marijuana legalization started with medical marijuana laws, making all sorts of unfounded claims about the potential benefits of the drug. It was those laws that were then expanded to include recreational use of the drug.

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“When companies make unproven health claims about their products, it can put consumers at risk,” Rosalie Liccardo Pacula, a professor at the University of Southern California, told the Times. No kidding. Where were these experts for the past 20 years? Many of these claims are made in violation of FDA standards, but apparently no one is cracking down on them. And frankly, even if they did, there are so many illegal dispensaries that it probably wouldn’t matter.

There is apparently shock on the part of observers about what has happened in this industry in such a short a time, but what did we expect? Cigarette companies used to claim health benefits. Alcohol companies still sponsor studies that show that drinking wine every day is good for your health. Did we not think that Big Weed would act the same as Big Tobacco, Big Alcohol and Big Pharma? “This is a race to the bottom,” another analyst tells the Times. Yes, people want to make money off of their products. And the more benefits they claim and the higher the potency they can sell, the more money they will make.

There are those, apparently like RFK, who believe that legalization would make drug use less dangerous. People would not engage in as much criminal activity in order to acquire drugs, for instance. Implicit in this bargain was that usage, including dangerous usage, would remain constant. The only thing that would change would be people’s behavior around getting the drug.

But the truth is that legalization cannot be disentangled from the message sent by legalization. When you legalize something, you tell people— especially young people — that it is totally fine. The false claims about the supposed health benefits of cannabis are secondary — of course it doesn’t cure cancer or anxiety (and may actually increase the latter). The real lie is that cannabis use is safe and acceptable.

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