You might have noticed how governments (and corporations) are getting chill on the topic of marijuana. The best explanation I’ve see for this trend is from a 2012 crime novel by John Burdett (Vulture Peak):

“The world economy has positioned itself in such a way that almost everyone is going to be unemployed by the middle of this century. The American sucker-consumer is now bankrupt for the next fifty years, and there’s no way Asians generally are going to waste their money en masse on toys like iPods — hoarding is hardwired in every head east of Suez. Americans are strange people. They allow themselves to be bled white by gangsters for generation after generation and call it freedom. But that blissful ignorance may be in its endgame. The consumer economy is already dead — what we’re experiencing right now is its wake. What do you think governments are going to use to keep everyone docile when the shit finally hits the fan?”

The answer? Cannabis.

“The best thing about it: young men delude themselves into believing they’re already war heroes. They don’t need to kill anyone.”

One more…

“Remember, no one’s elected in Beijing. That means they have to plan ahead. They have teams looking fifty, even a hundred years into the future. They have detailed economic and social models. And they don’t have democracy. They know what’s coming next.”