Behind the Curtain: Scaling sin

They're ubiquitous, digital and spreading at a pace that has outstripped the country's social and regulatory guardrails.

• Governments didn't turn a blind eye to most of this behavior. They encouraged it. We're scaling sin in real time.

This shift in American governance, both at the national and local levels, didn't play out all at once — or get kick-started by a singular moment. It happened in a thousand small ones, one app launch and regulatory retreat at a time.

• New York Times columnist Ross Douthat made sense of our "more immoral society" this way: "As our laws have become less moralistic and more libertarian, addictive behaviors have increased."
• Substacker Derek Thompson points out that in a 2023 Wall Street Journal poll, Americans said patriotism, religion, having children and community all mattered less to them than in years prior. The only metric that mattered more? Money.

The biggest factors that ushered in our more addicted, money-hungry America:

1. Smoking weed. Not long ago, you might've gone to jail for using pot, much less selling it. Now, it's legal for a vast swath of Americans and serves as a primary tax engine for nearly half the country.

• 24 states plus D.C. have legalized recreational marijuana, with 40 states allowing medical use.
• The Trump administration ordered the reclassification of medical marijuana as a Schedule III drug last month, moving it from alongside heroin and ecstasy to the same category as steroids and ketamine.
• States have collected nearly $25 billion in cannabis tax revenue since the first legal sales began in 2014, according to the Marijuana Policy Project — with 2024 alone setting a record at $4.4 billion. California topped $1 billion by itself.

2. Betting. There's no reason to visit a sportsbook when you have one in your pocket. That lack of friction is destroying the lives — and arguably the morality — of countless young Americans, even as it fills state coffers.

• More than half of American men ages 18-49 have an account with an online sportsbook, per a Siena poll out last month. 63% of bettors said they'd bet $100 or more in one day. 31% reported having someone express concern about their sports betting, up from 23% last year.
• A UCLA study found bankruptcy rates and debt collection amounts rose in states that legalized sports betting — with young men in low-income areas hit hardest.
• Prediction markets have raised the stakes beyond sports. They're not technically gambling — that's what their founders say, even as the public and some state prosecutors disagree. But their purview goes far beyond prop bets: You can now put money on chaos and destruction, gamifying the outcome of war. The money at stake is huge: April saw a 1,200% year-over-year increase in trading volume for Polymarket and Kalshi combined, per The Wall Street Journal.

3. Porn — and its AI-generated shadow. Online pornography was already ubiquitous before AI. Now, deepfake technology has created an entirely new category of harm that barely existed two years ago.

• The average age of first exposure to online pornography is now 12, with 15% of kids first seeing it at 10 or younger, according to a Common Sense Media survey of 1,300+ teens.

• AI is making it worse: Deepfake files online exploded from 500,000 in 2023 to an estimated 8 million by the end of last year, with up to 98% being nonconsensual, according to cybersecurity firm DeepStrike.
• Trump signed the TAKE IT DOWN Act last year, criminalizing the posting of nonconsensual intimate images, including AI deepfakes. But the law can't keep pace with the scale: A company named in a recent lawsuit claims to create 1,000 AI-generated "influencers" per week.

The big picture: This is what happens when all three of the tectonic shifts we've told you about — in governance, in the post-news era, in the age of AI — collide at once.

• AI is supercharging the supply, creating deepfakes at a pace no law can match. Our shattered information ecosystem means there's no common authority left to set norms or apply social pressure. The government, rather than policing the line, has become the cashier.
• Each shift alone would strain our culture. Together, they've created Sin Nation.

What's next: There's potential for political agreement that some portion of America's scaling of sin might have been too much, too fast.

• Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) posted on X in March: "Pervasive gambling is not good for society. It turns life into a casino, traps people in addiction & debt, surges domestic violence, and fosters manipulation."
• Figures from varying corners of GOP ideology responded in agreement: Michael Knowles, Ann Coulter, Erick Erickson.

The bottom line: Reining in Sin Nation could be one of the rare issues that unites left and right.

• Don't bet on it — though, of course, legally you could.

📈 If you're a CEO or on a CEO's team: Ask to join Jim's new weekly Axios C-Suite newsletter.