American's are loosening their perspective on drug consumption
This Page of the Omeka site further builds on the prediction that religion will cease to function as an inhibitor of drug consumption in teenagers in America in the next 5 years. In my podcast, I argue that this is due to an ecological pressure known in cultural psychology as tightness v.s. looseness. This page works towards showing that there is a looser societal consensus on drug consumption, meaning there is less reinforcement of the moral beliefs around drugs and as a result, less pressure inhibiting anyone in society from consuming drugs.
Artifact #4: This graph comes from the Pew Research Center and shows the trends of public opinion toward the legalization of marijuana across the years in America. The trends show that support is swaying towards the legalization of marijuana, meaning that more and more people are in favor of making it legal to consume, not necessarily that they are consuming it. Therefore this aids in building a looser social consensus on drug consumption, if American society is in favor of legalizing it at 67% approval to 33% against it, we are seeing over half of Americans are okay with some form of drug consumption. This shows a destigmatization of drug consumption and can be a leading factor as to why youth are engaging more in the consumption of marijuana as seen in the graph below.
Artifact #5: My second prediction builds on the idea that because of this societal looseness more youth will consume drugs and this will result in a different religious perspective on drugs. This graph by the Pew Research Center supplements this argument by confirming that youth are increasingly partaking in drug consumption, with an 8.4% increase in marijuana consumption by 12th graders across just under 3 decades. Therefore it is possible that religion is loosening its grip on youth as they are more and more consuming marijuana, and this could be a result of teenagers developing a more individualistic take on religion which drugs may continue to feed.