MARIJUANA fans take heart. It seems that when times are hard, liberal attitudes to drugs tend to prevail.

Euan Wilson of the Socionomics Institute in Gainesville, Georgia, finds that anti-drug laws in the US tend to coincide with high share prices, and legalisation with low.

Comparing today’s situation with alcohol prohibition in the US between 1920 and 1933, Wilson says that just as alcohol was legalised when the economic slump reached its nadir, so concessions to marijuana use could be around the corner (The Socionomist, July 2009). “The current mood is very similar to the 1930s,” says Wilson.

He …