Call me crazy but you may be onto something. I don't think it's necessarily foreign actors that would take advantage of it though, moreso multinational corporations who need a sated and pliable workforce who don't think too much about their poor living conditions, lack of societal progress, lack of upward mobility, etc.
I do find it interesting that as cigarettes have waned in popularity and weed has gotten more popular, we're finding that people are less creative and innovative than ever before and there seems to be a persistent monoculture throughout the West that's extraordinarily drab. Might it have something to do with nicotine's cognitive-enhancing ability versus cannabis diminishing cognitive function? Probably not, and there's likely no way to do a cohort study on this subject, but it's an interesting question to pose regardless.
Or might this mono-culture simply be a side effect of the internet?
Much like how the Roman empire led to a linguistic "mono-culture", and how railways (and later airplanes) increased global homogeneity, it seems more likely to me that as humans are more and more in contact with their far away cousins, they all start to blend more.
I do find it interesting that as cigarettes have waned in popularity and weed has gotten more popular, we're finding that people are less creative and innovative than ever before and there seems to be a persistent monoculture throughout the West that's extraordinarily drab. Might it have something to do with nicotine's cognitive-enhancing ability versus cannabis diminishing cognitive function? Probably not, and there's likely no way to do a cohort study on this subject, but it's an interesting question to pose regardless.