A former drug policy adviser to three US administrations is emerging as the most prominent voice challenging cannabis legalisation in America. Kevin Sabet challenges cannabis industry expansion with a stark message: today’s marijuana bears little resemblance to what most people remember from decades past.

The numbers tell a compelling story. Cannabis from the 1970s and 1980s typically contained around 5% THC, the plant’s primary psychoactive compound. Modern concentrates can reach near-pure potency levels. This transformation has coincided with alarming increases in mental health crises, violent incidents and addiction rates, particularly amongst young people.

When Reality Defied Expectations

New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd learned this lesson firsthand. In 2014, shortly after Colorado legalised recreational cannabis, she tried a marijuana candy bar in Denver. The experience, which she documented in a now-legendary column, began calmly enough. Within hours, however, she had descended into severe paranoia, convinced she had died.

Social media mocked her at the time. The prevailing narrative suggested she simply hadn’t “dosed correctly.” But Dowd’s experience foreshadowed what researchers and clinicians would later document on a much larger scale.

Since Colorado’s pioneering move, 23 additional states plus the District of Columbia have legalised recreational cannabis. The momentum came from an unusual coalition: anti-prohibition progressives, free-market conservatives, and entrepreneurs eyeing the next major vice industry.

The Violence Nobody Expected

Robert Westman’s case represents the darkest outcome of this experiment. Last August, the 23-year-old murdered two children and wounded 30 others during a rampage at a Minnesota Catholic school. Westman worked at a cannabis dispensary and was a regular user. His diaries revealed his own understanding of what had happened to him.

“Gender and weed fucked up my head,” he wrote. “I wish I never tried experimenting with either. Don’t let your kids smoke weed or change gender until they are, like, 17.”

Westman’s tragedy isn’t isolated. A 2025 study published in the East Asian Archives of Psychiatry identified a definite and growing link between mass shooting perpetrators and cannabis use, possession or distribution. Younger perpetrators showed particularly strong associations with the drug.

“If you look at almost every single mass shooting in this country, there are many common denominators,” Sabet explains. “One of them is a substance. And it’s not alcohol, and it’s not meth, and it’s not fentanyl. So you can guess what it is.”

The Mental Health Toll

The psychiatric consequences extend well beyond extreme violence. A 2019 study in Lancet Psychiatry found that young people regularly using high-potency cannabis face significantly elevated psychosis risk. Researchers at King’s College London examined cities where strong cannabis is widely available, including London and Amsterdam. Their conclusion: a substantial proportion of new psychosis cases are directly associated with daily cannabis use.

London now operates a pioneering clinic dedicated specifically to cannabis-induced psychosis. These aren’t typical “bad trips” that fade after a few hours. Clinicians describe shattered minds and patients driven to suicide by what the drug has done to them.

Even The Guardian, historically sympathetic to legalisation, now regularly publishes warnings about cannabis health effects. Recent findings include a doubled risk of cardiac death amongst users.

A Policy Victory

Through his organisation Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM), Kevin Sabet challenges cannabis industry lobbying at the federal level. The group has become Washington’s most visible drug policy advocacy organisation, and recently achieved a significant win.

The Biden administration had proposed rescheduling marijuana from Schedule I, the federal government’s most restrictive drug classification. Whilst this wouldn’t have meant federal legalisation, it would have granted cannabis a veneer of federal safety approval. More importantly for the industry, rescheduling would have unlocked tax deductions currently prohibited.

Pro-cannabis lobbyists, including former Republican House Speaker John Boehner, pushed hard for the change. But Sabet’s campaign appears to have succeeded in staying President Trump’s hand on the matter.

“This isn’t a priority for the president,” Sabet reports, though he acknowledges that business interests connected to Trump’s associates continue applying pressure.

An Unlikely Crusader

Sabet’s background makes him an unusual figure in American drug policy debates. Born to a Bahai family that fled Iran before the 1979 revolution, he grew up in a completely abstinent household. The Bahai faith, persecuted by Iran’s Islamic regime, preaches unity amongst all religions and total abstinence from intoxicants.

When his family moved to Orange County during his teenage years, the contrast with American youth culture proved stark. At UC Berkeley in the mid-1990s, he witnessed marijuana shops operating before such businesses were commonplace. The arrival of rave culture brought what he describes as a “mini-epidemic” linked to MDMA.

As a student, he began visiting clubs to distribute postcards. One side showed brain scans of drug users. The other provided helpline information.

This activism caught the attention of General Barry McCaffrey, President Clinton’s drug czar. “I thought the call was fake,” Sabet recalls. It wasn’t. McCaffrey offered him a speechwriting position, launching a career in federal drug policy.

After 9/11, whilst friends deployed to Afghanistan, Sabet felt guilty pursuing academic work at Oxford. The White House called again. The Bush administration wanted him as a senior speechwriter on drug policy. “We want you to serve your country,” the caller told him. “We know you’re not a Republican, but we also know you’re not a Democrat, and that’s fine with us.”

The Obama administration later tapped him as senior drug policy adviser, making him one of the few people to serve across three presidencies in this field.

Why Cannabis Matters Most

The focus on cannabis puzzles some observers. Fentanyl kills tens of thousands annually. Heroin devastates communities. Why would someone concentrate advocacy efforts on a drug many still consider relatively benign?

“It’s the most dangerous drug in my mind because it’s the most misunderstood,” Sabet argues. Previous generations could experiment with low-potency cannabis as part of growing up, then move on to adult responsibilities. Today’s industrial products do the opposite.

“The marijuana of today is doing the opposite,” he says. “It’s causing violence, it’s causing erratic people to lose any sense of reality.”

The statistics support his concern. Regular cannabis use now exceeds alcohol consumption in America. Eighteen million Americans report daily marijuana use, compared to fewer than one million in the 1990s. Cannabis use disorder diagnoses have exploded alongside these numbers. One in three users meets criteria for the condition, experiencing insatiable cravings that prevent them fulfilling basic responsibilities.

Sabet recalls speaking to a large audience about cannabis addiction. During the question period, an attendee challenged him: “I use it every day, Kevin, and I’m qualified to tell you it’s not addictive.”

The Alcohol Comparison

Critics frequently ask why Kevin Sabet challenges cannabis industry growth when alcohol causes tremendous harm. Why not advocate for prohibition of all intoxicants?

His answer distinguishes between substances based on cultural history and physiological effects. “The reason I would say that Prohibition wasn’t sustainable as a policy in America is because alcohol has been so ingrained in Western civilisation, since before the time of the Old Testament.”

Alcohol also leaves the body relatively quickly for most people, typically within 24 hours. Cannabis lingers far longer at the cellular level, with effects that can persist for weeks.

As for tobacco, Sabet notes that functionality remained possible even with heavy use. “Ninety percent of the people who built the Brooklyn Bridge were smokers. They were smoking at the time they built the Brooklyn Bridge. They could function.”

The cigarette crisis emerged only with industrialisation and mass production. Lung cancer deaths were virtually unknown before the 1920s. Sabet sees a parallel with cannabis. The crisis stems not from traditional marijuana use, but from an industrialised product bred for maximum THC content, marketed aggressively, and sold by an industry that prioritises profits over public health.

The Path Forward

Half of US states have already legalised recreational cannabis, making comprehensive restriction politically unfeasible. As Kevin Sabet challenges cannabis industry narratives, he identifies something deeper than policy at the crisis’s root: a “moral and spiritual breakdown” in which drugs offer false meaning or numb the pain of modern existence.

Even so, societies can erect guardrails. Restricting cannabis advertising that targets young people represents one approach. Behavioural incentive programmes offer another path, providing cash rewards for abstinence or giving addicts choices between incarceration and rehabilitation.

“I’m calling for a new effort on drugs,” Sabet says, conscious of the baggage attached to the War on Drugs. “I don’t love the war analogy because wars have defined ends, or they should. And this will never stop. We will never stop having to stop drug use amongst young generations.”

He embraces an aspirational approach. “I embrace aiming for a drug-free society, even if it’s not possible. We’ve never had a violence-free society, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t want to aim for that.”

The early signs suggest his message is breaking through. Public polling shows growing scepticism about cannabis legalisation. Young voters, particularly young men, are questioning narratives they were told about marijuana’s harmlessness. Politicians who once rushed to embrace legalisation are quietly reconsidering.

For Sabet, the work continues. Three presidencies, one book, countless speeches, and years of advocacy have positioned him uniquely. As Kevin Sabet challenges cannabis industry expansion with evidence-based arguments, the conversation has shifted from whether marijuana poses risks to how society should respond to those risks.

Source: UnHerd