
Nicotine is notoriously addictive, to the extent that the global market for nicotine cessation in 2021 was valued at an estimated $23 billion. Alcoholism is so insidious that those who are severe alcoholics can die if they go cold turkey.
Yet marijuana — the most popular psychotropic drug after alcohol — does not have the same stigma surrounding addiction. In stoner culture, the idea that marijuana is addictive in the same way as other famously addictive drugs is played for laughs, as seen in the 1998 stoner comedy "Half-Baked."