Our old policies toward cannabis failed. But our new, laid-back approach to pot is mutating into a public health threat. Newly released research shows that for the first time, more people in the United States are using marijuana daily or almost every day compared with the number of people who say they consume alcohol that often.

No matter how many masks, gloves and at-home tests the government stockpiles, or how intently the pharmaceutical industry works to develop vaccines that protect broadly against ever-shifting virus variants, or how much wastewater Centers for Disease Control sleuths examine for signs of community outbreaks, our response to the next pandemic will almost certainly be worse than the shambolic national response to Covid-19.

We have created an ecosystem of abuse in which technology companies that have become central to the way people now access health care or monitor their health operate largely outside the federal law that requires doctors and other medical personnel, hospitals and insurers to protect an individual’s intimate health information. The result is an online trove of personal health information that’s subject to exposure and misuse.

The opposition to vaccines against Covid-19 has led to a politically pointed message and movement that threatens to remove or erode mandates that schoolchildren be vaccinated against common childhood diseases. We need to communicate more effectively against this threat to public health.

The health care changes embedded in the big climate, health and tax bill President Biden will sign address both cost and access to care, the two concerns that trouble Americans most.

We don’t yet know yet if the unusual charge of terrorism brought by Oakland County, Michigan prosecutor Karen D. McDonald against the teenager who killed four people and wounded seven others at Oxford High School outside Detroit—or the charges against the parents who enabled 15-year-old Ethan Crumbley’s plot for a deadly rampage by purchasing for him a semi-automatic weapon—will hold up in court.

For all the focus on tradeoffs, compromises and downsized ambitions as congressional Democrats and the Biden White House near the endgame in negotiations over the administration’s social spending plan, there’s still a remarkable opportunity to continue changing health care in ways that address the painfully persistent and interconnected problems of cost and access to care.

As the nation staggers through the COVID-19 pandemic, most remain oblivious to the epidemics that plagued Americans’ health before COVID struck—and will continue to do so after it subsides. These include the opioid crisis, obesity and the continuing toll from tobacco use. Among these, reducing the nation’s persistent, deadly addiction to tobacco holds the most promise for broadly improving public health, protecting young people from harm and reducing health care costs. That’s why Democratic tax-writers in the House are right to propose doubling federal tobacco taxes to help pay for part of President Biden’s planned expansion of social programs. Higher tobacco taxes will raise revenue, reduce tobacco use and save billions in health care costs, while helping to finance the administration’s proposed strengthening of the health care safety net. Read my view @ CNN Opinion.