Marijuana Is The Soma Of The (Brave New) Modern World

In Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, published in 1932, Soma is a state-sanctioned drug used to pacify the population of the World State, ensuring compliance and emotional numbness by providing an escape from discomfort, dissent, or independent thought—a mechanism of control that mirrors the role marijuana plays in contemporary Western civilization. In Huxley’s dystopia, Soma is distributed freely to citizens, who take it to suppress feelings of unease or rebellion, as seen when Lenina Crowne uses it to avoid confronting her dissatisfaction with the rigid social order, reflecting a society that prioritizes stability over freedom. Similarly, marijuana’s widespread legalization in Western countries like the United States—where, as of 2025, 24 states have fully legalized recreational use, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures—has normalized its use as a means of escapism, with 17% of Americans reporting regular use in a 2024 Gallup poll, up from 7% in 2013. This parallels Soma’s role, as marijuana often serves as a socially accepted way to dull the edges of modern anxieties, from economic instability to political polarization, rather than addressing their root causes.
 
The allegory deepens when considering how both Soma and marijuana are integrated into the cultural fabric to maintain a docile populace, albeit through different mechanisms. In Brave New World, the World State uses Soma as part of a broader system of control, including genetic engineering and conditioning, to eliminate conflict and ensure conformity—citizens are taught to view Soma as a harmless necessity, with slogans like “a gramme is better than a damn.” In contemporary Western society, marijuana is often framed as a benign or even therapeutic substance, with 88% of U.S. adults supporting legalization for medical or recreational use in a 2024 Pew Research Center survey, and its promotion by celebrities and influencers on platforms like Instagram and TikTok further glamorizes its use. Yet, this normalization obscures marijuana’s potential to pacify, as its psychoactive effects—primarily through THC—can reduce motivation and critical engagement, a phenomenon critics like Alex Berenson in his 2019 book Tell Your Children link to increased apathy and mental health risks, echoing Soma’s role in stifling dissent by keeping citizens in a haze of contentment.
 
However, the comparison has its limits, as marijuana’s role in Western civilization isn’t orchestrated by a centralized authority like the World State, but rather emerges from a complex interplay of market forces, cultural shifts, and policy decisions, raising questions about intent and agency. Unlike Soma, which is mandatory and engineered to produce specific effects, marijuana use remains a choice, though one heavily influenced by societal pressures—capitalist interests, for instance, have turned the cannabis industry into a $61 billion market by 2025, per BDSA analytics, pushing aggressive marketing that mirrors the World State’s propaganda in its pervasiveness. Moreover, while Soma ensures total conformity, marijuana has also been a tool for counterculture and resistance, as seen in its historical association with civil rights movements and anti-establishment protests in the 1960s and 70s. Still, the allegory holds in the broader sense: both substances, in their respective contexts, reveal a civilization willing to trade critical awareness for comfort, a choice Huxley warned could erode the very freedoms Western societies claim to uphold, leaving us to wonder if today’s cannabis culture is a step toward Huxley’s vision of a controlled, complacent world.