Dr. Keith Humphreys

I'm glad we have companies.

I love living in Silicon Valley.

I love all the things people create there.

And I think that is an important part for society to work, to have a private sector.

And at the same time you have to regulate addictive goods, temptation goods very intelligently and tightly because you can't count on the sort of rational consumer

to protect themselves like you can when you're dealing with cabbage or lettuce which nobody ever overdoses on.

But we do see people burning down their lives over all these drugs.

And for that reason, to protect those people but also to protect the rest of us from the consequences of that,

That's why, you know, you need things like advertising restrictions.

That's why taxes to which people, even heavy users respond to price.

You know, that's a really important tool to regulate them.

I would do much more with cannabis, particularly, you know, just some of the promotion is so naked and a lot of it is in places where kids are exposed particularly.

And this has just been a long-term fight.

You know, we had it with the tobacco industry.

Almost any nasty thing you could say about the tobacco industry turned out to be true.

I mean, you know, they did work to make it more addictive.

They worked to defeat any type of health regulation.

They were marketing to kids, all that stuff.

So those are the economic incentives.

And so you should not be naive if you work in this space about what the financial incentives are if you're making an addictive product.