Mary Jane's Last Dance?

The backlash to marijuana legalization is slowly building - but apparently the White House can't hear it

¡Feliz Fiesta de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe a todos! Big week for Marian feasts, less so for her favorite university. If it’s Friday, it’s Family Matters:

• One Toke Over the Line: The White House is considering expanding access to marijuana. It shouldn't.

• Marriages and Mortgages: Tracing housing affordability for young adults

• ‘Make Travel Family Friendly Again’: $1 billion announced for more parent-friendly airports

• It’s Me, Hi: Vox

• Parting Shots

One Toke Over the Line

The Trump administration is preparing to take the wrong step on marijuana, according to reporting by Jacob Bogage, Dan Diamond and David Ovalle of the Washington Post. A draft executive order would reportedly follow the Biden administration’s lead on having marijuana be rescheduled as a less dangerous substance by the federal government, placing it at the same level as Tylenol with codeine, steroids, and other controlled but legal substances. Kevin A. Sabet, co-founder of Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM), put it bluntly:¹ the move, if it happens, “would make [Trump] the most pro-drug president in modern American history.”

As I wrote earlier this year, also for City Journal, making marijuana even more accessible via federal rescheduling would be bad news for young men in particular. If you’re concerned about young men on the fringes of the labor force, or becoming less viable as relationship material, turning the forces of modern-day capitalism loose on the problem of how best to expand marijuana’s consumer base is an outcome you should want to avoid. And public opinion polling suggests a burgeoning coalition of those concerned about that outcome.

I should be clear that I don’t believe a visible political backlash to marijuana legalization has arrived — yet. As a new poll we conducted suggests, legal weed is still popular, particularly on the left. But it doesn’t take that much work to peer through the haze, blink a little, and see a growing movement that may put the genie at least somewhat back in the bottle. The White House is reportedly deciding to open the floodgates to, say, a world with weed ads at every sporting event due to concern about flagging approval ratings ahead of next year’s mid-term election. In so doing, it will be making a decision it very well may come to regret, over the long-term, on both political and substantive grounds.

Dispensary in Eugene, Oregon, via Flickr

There’s plenty of evidence that Americans are still largely sympathetic to medical marijuana, and depending on the poll, a majority will say they favor it for recreational use as well. But that is changing. Gallup’s time-series data show that the share of Americans who favored legalizing marijuana hit a peak in 2023, and has fallen from 70 to 64 percent in the past two years alone. This was heavily driven by Republicans veering off the path towards acceptance that progressives and moderates had already followed and re-committing to their more traditional position (funnily enough, a similar pattern seems to have emerged on the gay marriage debate.) Per Gallup, GOP support for marijuana legalization fell by 13 percentage points in the last year alone.

Our poll doesn’t offer the same longitudinal approach, but gives us a number of ways to slice the data. And while we find that marijuana legalization is nominally popular (across the board, 57 percent of all respondents somewhat or strongly support it), we also see recognition of the harms — particularly among college-educated voters with kids at home:

Among young adults, where there tends to be more support for legal weed, whether or not you have kids influences your view on the question. Respondents aged 45 and under who don’t have kids are 34 percentage points more likely to favor legal weed than oppose it. Among those with kids, the gap is half as big, with support outstripping opposition by 17 percentage points.

There are some compositional effects here (parents are more likely to be married, religious, etc. than non-parents), but it’s also completely plausible that when you are thinking about weed’s impact on your child’s future, and his or her peers, your mindset shifts compared to thinking about just your own personal decisions.

To no one’s surprise, Harris voters were more supportive of marijuana legalization (about half were “strongly supportive”) than Trump voters in 2024 (about 20 percent said the same, while one-third “strongly opposed” it.) Interestingly, younger Trump voters were more supportive of legal weed than their older comrades-in-arms, while younger Harris voters were more skeptical than older ones: 20 percent of Harris voters under 46 expressed some opposition to legal weed, compared to 8 percent of older ones. Younger Harris voters were also more likely than older ones to express concern about the social consequences of marijuana legalization:

This offers a sketch for what a new political coalition interested in curbing the excesses of our rapid entry into a world of widespread medical marijuana might look like. As John Shelton wrote for WORLD magazine, the changing political coalitions make for some interesting new contours: “The Coalition for a Healthy Massachusetts, which is poised to put an anti-marijuana provision on ballots in 2026, could not sound more different than Portnoy’s coalition of Floridians for libertine adult pleasure. The Massachusetts coalition, made up of parents, teachers, and health professionals, is concerned about marijuana’s effects on children.” Concerned liberals (like Ezra Klein and, to a lesser extent, his co-author Derek Thompson, whose 2026 trend post highlights that daily marijuana usage has now surpassed alcohol) can now see the consequences of increasingly-available, increasingly-potent marijuana products in the form of increased ER visits, more accidental poisonings, and a more lethargic, less dependable culture for young adults.

I don’t expect the Massachusetts ballot measure to pass (at least, not this time around.) But the fact that one of the most educated and most secular states in the union could recognize the problems with widespread weed to the point of raising the question to the level of a ballot initiative is illuminating. Charles Fain Lehmanrecently made a similar point at City Journal. A political coalition of concerned parents, religious conservatives, and liberals increasingly recognizing what widespread legalization is doing to young people might just be taking shape, even if they are currently outgunned by the investors and entrepreneurs hoping to make money from a newly-legal industry.

If the White House decides to go through with their proposal, conservatives and well-meaning liberals shouldn’t accept a new reality of capitalism-fueled marijuana availability without a fight. The concerns about what widespread weed could mean for children’s health — and young adults’ long-term outcomes — won’t have gone away, regardless of the profit motives involved.

Marriages and Mortgages

There are certain truisms one should take to heart. Never get involved in a land war in Asia, and never go against Scott Winship when stats are on the line. As such, I encourage everyone to read his most recent post carefully, and then return for a cautious rejoinder:

Has Marriage Fallen Because Young Adults Can’t Afford Homes?

His overarching point is fairly straightforward — part of the decline in homeownership is compositional, as more young adults are remaining single for longer and thus unable (and unwilling) to pool their resources to buy a home. His data clearly show a surge in young adult married homeownership happened in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, before growth controls and higher interest rates kicked in, and since then, rates for this demographic have fallen (from over 70 percent in the early 1980s to under 60 percent today.)

What his post can’t tell us, of course, is how mental models of marriage are shifting and affected by ever-escalating nominal home prices. It can certainly be the case that young married couples in the 1950s didn’t expect to own their home right away, but as the other goods once exclusive to marriage have been winnowed away, the economic logic for marriage now takes more of a place of pre-eminence. Buying a home together is often a decision point for many couples, and if high and rising house prices make the thought of homeownership feel out of reach, you may be content to drift along later in life without actively deciding to formalize the relationship. In other words, if you can cohabit and enjoy much of the goods that were once exclusive to marriage (sex, babies, social stature, a willing companion to listen to your theories on what happened to Stranger Things’ Barb), you might wait even longer to tie the knot until you know you want to co-sign on the loan application.

It is completely fair to say, as Winship does, that “the decline in marriage is more to do with cultural change”² and point out, accurately, that these trends bite young couples interested in a single-earner model of family life hardest.³ But we also know, particularly from work by Jeanne Lafortune and Corinne Low, that marriage rates (and persistence) and housing prices clearly have some link.

Ultimately, a culture that accepts increasing housing prices with the implicit understanding people will just wait later in life to marry and put down the down payment will find itself unhappy with the long-term results. Winship may be correct that the problem is only somewhat worse today than it was decades prior, but that ignores how accepting high housing costs as a semi-permanent feature of American life contributes to a “capstone” model of marriage, rather than pursuing housing abundance (to coin a phrase) that allows for more people from more walks of life to put down roots.

It’s always good not to catastrophize, but it’s also worth tackling a problem even if it is not (yet) able to be officially declared a catastrophe. Removing the regulatory and supply-side housing barriers that artificially prevent housing from being more affordable remains one of the biggest pro-family tools in our arsenal, and we should use it.

‘Make Travel Family Friendly Again’

When you have kids, you start to notice the little things that make daily life a little more parent-friendly. One such innovation, that many travelers will walk by without a second glance on their way between the Capital One Lounge and Gate D38, are the child play-spaces that have popped up in a growing number of airports (I’ve seen them at DCA, DFW, IAD, SBN, and SEA, though I know there are others as well.)

As previously discussed at Family Matters, Department of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy is making a viable bid for being the most pro-family member of the Trump II cabinet. His pre-Thanksgiving message of being polite and helping pregnant moms while traveling was a nice touch of bourgeois moralism. He’s openly solicited ideas on how to make traveling with kids a little easier, and one of his first acts upon being sworn in was to express an interest in prioritizing communities with high marriage and birth rates for federal infrastructure grants.

His latest campaign, to “Make Travel Family Friendly Again,” was launched last week. I must admit I’m not convinced traveling across the country was ever particularly family-friendly (the “golden age” of jet travel limited flying to the well-off, for example,) but the goal is the right one. DOT will be providing $1 billion in funding to create more family resources in airports, such as the aforementioned kids play areas, nursing rooms for mothers, an expansion of the family-friendly security screening lanes, and more.

All this on top of the recently passed Bottles and Breastfeeding Equipment Screening (BABES) Enhancement Act, which made it through the Senate with the help of Sens. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), and Steve Daines (R-Mont.). It seeks to make TSA screening practices more accommodating of the needs of breastfeeding moms. Taken together, we can see real evidence of a family-friendly approach to transportation policy taking shape. There are more ideas one could pursue, but Secretary Duffy is showing that you don’t need a post-liberal revolution, or a socialist takeover, to redirect our public spaces and infrastructure in a more pro-family direction.

It’s Me, Hi

I was interviewed for a story by Gabrielle M. Etzel and Mabinty Quarshie for the Washington Examiner on how the politics of abortion are complicating Congress’ attempt to deal with expiring Covid-era health care subsidies:

“Patrick T. Brown, fellow at the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center, told the Washington Examiner that overturning Roe was “kind of a unifying goal for a lot of conservatives”…[whereas the subsidy fight] “is just another example of how the post-Roe policy is very tricky for the pro-life movement. This White House is not one that wants to put a lot of political capital behind the issue of abortion.”

I spoke to Rachel Cohen Booth for her piece at Vox on how birth rates and gendered expectations collide — and what happens when societies can’t adjust to what I’m calling the rising reservation wage of getting into a relationship:

“It used to be that women felt like they had no other choice — like maybe this guy’s not great but he’s the best that’s going to come along,” said Patrick Brown, a family policy analyst at the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center. “But now...women are willing to stay single if they don’t meet somebody who matches their criteria.”

Parting Shots

• Reps. Ashley Hinson (R-Iowa) and Adam Gray (D-Calif.) reintroduced the Midwives for MOMS Act, which seeks to increase the supply of midwives and nurse-midwives through dedicated funding for training programs and expanding accredited schools or programs.

• Rep. Hinson is also introducing the Supporting Healthy Pregnancy Act, which would require the biological father of a child to pay at least 50% of out-of-pocket costs for medical expenses associated with a pregnancy and delivery, including health insurance premiums. (Fox News)

• And Rep. Hinson is also co-sponsoring a bill with Rep. Suhas Subramanyam (D-Va.), which would set up a savings account for the purchase of a new home ($10,000 a year for singles, or $20,000 for couples). As with other housing finance tweaks, the idea would do less to make housing more affordable as much as shuffle who is able to buy the house (those with more means generally benefit more from tax-advantaged accounts), but it is focusing on the right question.

• For the Washington Examiner, Tim Carney checks in on the most recent numbers from Hungary’s pro-natalist experiments (spoiler: they’re not great)

• In other news from Hungary, The Pillar’s Luke Coppen reports on a clash on bioethics between the Orbán government and the Catholic bishops in that country.

• We’ve got a Rachel Cohen Booth trifecta: Reporting on experiments in care infrastructure in Bogota (Vox), the aforementioned piece looking at gender expectations and birth rates (Vox), and an optimistic opinion piece on how Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani might take on child care (New York Times)

• Chris M. Herbst and Erdal Tekin find that stepped-up immigration enforcement leads to a shift in the types of child care families use, and may dampen female labor force participation (New America)

• A masterful examination of South Korea’s fertility trajectory by Phoebe Arslanagić-Little for Works in Progress, hitting notes that will be familiar to anyone who participated in our virtual book club on South Korea earlier this year through Fairer Disputations.

• A surrogacy firm closed without warning, reports Sarah Kliff, leaving the commissioning would-be parents out thousands of dollars and gestational surrogates in financial limbo (New York Times)

• David Brooks wants to bring back the neo-cons (the original blend) (The Atlantic)

• In an attempt to deal with rising home prices, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott wants to limit how fast they can rise in property tax appraisals at 3% a year — an idea which will almost certainly lead to crimping Texas’ housing supply growth and lead to a more stagnant, less family-friendly housing market (Texas Tribune)

• Speaker Mike Johnson continues to be one of the most effective pro-life legislators in Washington, stripping a provision that would have expanded access to IVF to all service members, not just those injured in the line of duty, from the National Defense Authorization Act (Washington Post)

• Russ Greene offers a broadside against what he calls Total Boomer Luxury Communism, the redistribution of “wealth from younger families and workers to seniors, who are on average much richer.” (American Mind)

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1. :)

2. And, one might add, legal change.

3. This, as discussed last week, is perhaps the most important takeaway from the “Two Income Trap,” whose empirical work is otherwise shaky — more dual-income households can push up the cost of goods like housing if supply does not rise to meet it, making families who actively want a single-earner lifestyle actively worse off.