What do you mean by “leisure takes up resources”? Without “leisure”, we wouldn’t have scientific advancement. Back in the day when we were hunter-gatherers, and even pre-Industrial Revolution, we didn’t have much free time. We spent it all searching for life’s necessities, not unlike what some people do today in developing countries. Having free time has enabled us to do science (see Maslow’s hierarchy of needs) – to learn more about how this world works, and to thus better understand it.
In understanding how things work better, we have the technology to live more efficiently. There are still big advancements needed to further refine our technology. I am reading the book Biomimicry which points out several ways in which nature is much more efficient and environmentally friendly – producing energy via photosynthesis is cleaner than anything we have come up with, raw materials production, food production, etc. One of the reasons why we don’t understand much of how nature is able to accomplish these things is because the processes are so complex and hard to figure out, and because people like to fund science with known, profitable outcomes.
Of course some people like to spend their leisure time playing golf. Golf is the epitomy of waste. It takes up large swaths of land, it requires a mono-crop of grass which in turn requires tons of pesticides to maintain, the pesticides leach into the soil and degrade it as well as leach into groundwater to contaminate it. If there is anything that should be banished, it is not marijuana…it is golf.
Leisure doesn’t have to be so wasteful and unproductive. I spend my vacation time doing volunteer work to restore damaged ecosystems. I find relaxation in it and revitalization – all the benefits of leisure time – without having hugely negative impacts on the world.
People are going to consume resources. That’s a fact of life. We need to consume efficiently. This may mean revising our economic system to not incentivize things like planned obsolescence, and improving our understanding of nature so that we can produce resources more cleanly and efficiently with little environmental impact.