Brave New World

I have this clear memory of a late spring afternoon in the ‘90s, lying in the Meadow in Central Park with my friends, grass under my head, sun on my face, Camel Light between my fingers. Some kid from Columbia Prep—oozing 15-year-old confidence—was there, saying with absolute certainty that when weed was legalized, Marlboro already had the rights to it.

I thought he was full of it. But here we are, decades later—NYC dispensaries everywhere, pre-rolls sold like six-packs. So maybe that kid wasn’t so wrong after all.

Which is why this CBS article caught my eye. It quoted Colombian President Gustavo Petro saying that cocaine is “no worse than whiskey” and only illegal because it comes from Latin America. 

And I had to wonder—what’s really happening here? Is this about making more drugs legal, or is there a bigger conversation unfolding?

Because let’s be real—whiskey isn’t good for you. If alcohol were introduced today and had to go through FDA approval, it wouldn’t even get close. The risks are obvious:

• Kills organs

• Causes cancer

• Low threshold for overdose

• Highly addictive—with withdrawal that can literally kill you

Meanwhile, cocaine? Also terrible. Just a different flavor of disaster—heart attacks, brain damage, reckless behavior. We’ve seen this play out before. Crack is whack. We all watched Whitney & Bobby, Do the Right Thing, New Jack City, Moonlight.

So what’s actually going on?

I think we’ve moved past rational problem-solving and straight into the “Oh, it’s like that? Aight, bet.” era of decision-making.

Do I think people want legal cocaine? No. But Petro didn’t say this by accident. He also pointed out that fentanyl “is killing Americans, and it’s not made in Colombia.” 

So maybe this is a shot at failed U.S. drug policies. Maybe it’s a strategic move to shift the conversation in Latin America and in countries on the losing end of the war on drugs. Or maybe it’s just forcing us to ask:

Why are some vices legal and others aren’t? Who profits from making things the way they are?

That’s what fascinates me—the fact that we’re even talking about this. Ideas once dismissed as absurd are now up for debate. Conversations once shut down are happening in real time.

I love watching how the world shifts—what people accept, what they resist, and how the unthinkable becomes inevitable.

What was impossible is now just… possible.

I don’t know where this leads. But I do know this: the world is shifting fast.

And that kid in the Meadow? He’d be very smug right now.