Cannabis industry running Big Tobacco’s playbook on children
As a local area resident and former Obama and Bush drug advisor, I oppose the expansion of marijuana dispensaries in our community, and I’m urging my neighbors to speak up before we normalize an industry whose business model depends on addiction.
This isn’t an abstract issue for me. I’ve spent more than two decades working on drug policy — advising three presidential administrations, Democrat and Republican — but more importantly, I’m a dad raising my kid in this community. When I see THC gummies packaged to look like the candy at the corner store, or a storefront going in near where our kids walk to school, I don’t see “economic development.” I see an industry that has studied Big Tobacco’s playbook and is running it on our children.
And make no mistake — this is not your parents’ pot. Unlike the marijuana of the 70s, which was around 1-3% THC, today’s flower hovers around 20-25%, with concentrates like dabs and waxes reaching up to 99%. What would we expect when one of the industry’s largest investors is Altria, the parent company of Marlboro? Kid-friendly marketing, downplayed harms, addiction for profit — we’ve seen this movie before.
The research on what dispensaries do to communities is clear. A study from Washington State University found that regular exposure to marijuana advertising, including storefronts and billboards, increased the odds of adolescents using marijuana. A 2025 study from the Public Health Institute found that teens living in areas where marijuana storefronts are banned are significantly less likely to have a recent diagnosis of a psychotic disorder compared to teens who live near retail marijuana stores.
Users of today’s high-potency marijuana are more likely to experience psychosis, depression, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts. A study from Europe found that 30% of schizophrenia cases among young men would have been avoided if not for cannabis use disorder (CUD), the scientific term for addiction. And the incidence of CUD among users has risen dramatically, with 30% of people who use marijuana developing it.
We also can’t ignore what pot shops bring with them. Legalization was sold as a way to put criminals out of business — the opposite has happened. According to the DEA’s National Drug Threat Assessment, Chinese and Mexican criminal organizations have exploited state legalization to build a multi-billion-dollar black market, with illegal grow operations identified in more than 20 states — including right here in the Northeast — many staffed by trafficked workers, with profits funneled into other criminal enterprises. Oklahoma alone has shut down more than 3,000 illegal farms, most linked to organized crime. And the crime doesn’t stay at the grow sites: a peer-reviewed study in Justice Quarterly found that Denver neighborhoods with dispensaries experienced significantly higher rates of crime and disorder than comparable neighborhoods without them.
Our towns have a choice. We can learn from what Denver, Oklahoma, and California are living through — or we can repeat it. I’m asking my neighbors to join me in saying no to dispensary expansion here.
Kevin A. Sabet, Ph.D.
Fellow, ISPS, Yale University
President and CEO, Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM)
President and CEO, Foundation for Drug Policy Solutions (FDPS)
One Nation Under the Influence, (Wiley/Polity)
Ancram
