Australia doesn’t regulate cannabis because it’s dangerous.

Australia regulates cannabis because if people stop smoking weed, they might stop drinking — and then what the hell happens to the tax base, the pubs, the pokies, the domestic violence statistics, the “mateship” ads, and the sacred cultural ritual of numbing yourself into compliance?

Cannabis is tightly controlled not because it ruins lives, but because it interrupts a perfectly profitable self-destruction loop. Weed makes people reflective. Alcohol makes them obedient. Weed makes you question why you’re tired, broke, and angry. Alcohol makes you forget long enough to show up again on Monday.

You don’t smash your boss’s car after a joint.

You don’t punch a wall after an edible.

You don’t wake up with a police record, a missing phone, and a shame hangover because you had “one cone too many.”

That’s the real crime.

If Australians stopped drinking and started thinking, the economy would notice. The compliance layer would crack. The marketing bullshit wouldn’t land. The “just work harder” spell would break. You’d have people asking dangerous questions like “why is my life structured like this?”

So cannabis gets wrapped in red tape, medicalised, gate-kept, taxed into irrelevance, and framed as a problem — while alcohol gets stadium sponsorships, government ads, and a smiling bloke telling you to “drink responsibly” before selling you a liver failure subscription.

This isn’t about public health.

It’s about behavioural control.

A slightly sedated, slightly angry, slightly numb population drinks.

A calm, introspective population doesn’t buy the story.

And that’s why weed is regulated like plutonium

while alcohol is treated like patriotism.

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