Posted on 01/07/2014 2:37:38 PM PST by nickcarraway
As we noted earlier today, the national media's response to the launch of recreational pot sales in Colorado suggests a case of news munchies, with the mainstream press, satirists and everyone in between sharing views on the topic -- including pundits and personalities less than thrilled by the development. Most of the latter are doing their best not to come across like drug-war dinosaurs, but that hasn't stopped one observer from inducting the likes of Tina Brown and David Brooks into the "Yuppie Prohibition League." The New York Times' Brooks created the template for high-brow naysayers with a column burdened with the clunky headline "Weed. Been There. Done That."
Brooks begins the piece by making it clear that he has personally inhaled, writing, "For a little while in my teenage years, my friends and I smoked marijuana. It was fun. I have some fond memories of us all being silly together. I think those moments of uninhibited frolic deepened our friendships." However, Brooks continues, he and his buds eventually drifted away from pot -- not because of the many horrible things about it ("it is addictive in about one in six teenagers," "smoking and driving is a good way to get yourself killed," "young people who smoke go on to suffer I.Q. loss and perform worse on other cognitive tests"), but due to the fact that "stoned people do stupid things." After one such incident, he confesses to feeling like a "total loser."
This acknowledgement serves as prelude to his argument that "in healthy societies...government subtly encourages the highest pleasures, like enjoying the arts or being in nature, and discourages lesser pleasures, like being stoned." And while "citizens of Colorado are, indeed, enhancing individual freedom," they are also "nurturing a moral ecology in which it is a bit harder to be the sort of person most of us want to be."
Presumably, Tina Brown, of The Daily Beast fame, agrees with Brooks's sentiment. Yet she took to Twitter to argue that he had been too polite to say that....
MSNBC token conservative Joe Scarborough took a less erudite tack in his reaction to sales in Colorado. In a video shared by Talking Points Memo, he says, "I don't get it, man. I don't get the legalization thing. I don't want to get too much into it, I mean, seriously, it just makes you dumb. Pot just makes you dumb."
Not that he's speaking from personal experience. He says he stayed away from weed in part because everyone who smoked the stuff struck him as a moron.
Here's the Scarborough clip, from his Morning Joe program:
Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi subsequently ripped on Brooks, Brown and Scarborough in a recent post. Yep, he's the one who coined the "Yuppie Prohibition League" handle -- and it's likely he'd sign up Ruth Marcus as an honorary member.
In a Washington Post op-ed dubbed "The Perils of Legalized Pot," Marcus attempts to preempt critics labeling her a "fuddy-duddy" by not only admitting to prior pot smoking, but suggesting that during her next visit to Colorado, she may well try out some Bubba Kush. Yet she believes that "on balance, society will not be better off with another legal mind-altering substance. In particular, our kids will not be better off with another legal mind-altering substance." She underscores this last statement by spending much of the piece citing studies about the harm done to kids who toke and brushing off the idea that Colorado's law limiting legal consumption to those 21 and over will make the slightest difference.
Fellow WaPo opinion writer Ed Rogers takes a more political slant. In his take, "Republicans, Just Say No to Marijuana," published today, he advises Republicans against jumping on the pot legalization bandwagon.
"Without question, we will face more human tragedy and ruined lives as a result of marijuana legalization," Rogers allows, adding that "if the Democrats think they have found an issue for 2014, let them be the ones to promise more pot to the population. And spare me the talk about personal freedom being at stake here. You aren't more free if you are a pothead and freedom isn't measured by marijuana consumption."
Depends on who's doing the measuring, presumably.
Funny you should mention tobacco along with marjuana. Do you also support banning tobacco and waging a war on tobacco with no knock raids, police in SWAT gear, people in jail for owning a few cigarettes, dogs being shot, the works? And wasn’t it liberals who started the whole fear mongering about second hand smoke in the first place? I am not sure why you would suddenly decide to latch on to their strategy.
Ending the federal war on drugs will give the police state less power and is not the only key for ending the police state, but it is a one important step. No more police going on about how “WE GOT HIM! Mission accomplished” when their jail someone for merely having some of the stuff in their car or home.
Actually it was what you were pushing, and what I responded to.
Just drop that line of argument if you don’t believe it as being truthful or honest.
lol
Put me down for a fruit basket.
So it isn’t pot you are promoting but all drugs.
You also want to get the feds to treat them as legal, and then let each state fight the international drug trade, on it’s own.
You are also pushing the lie that legalizing drugs, solves the police state problems, trust me, it won’t.
You like to throw around accusations.
Brave New World ping, thanks nickcarraway.
It isn’t an ‘accusation”, aren’t you reading what you are posting? You are using the 1930s church production for propaganda on this thread.
Meh.
Society encourages bad choices and the government salivates over the revenue.
Its Ironic that in the state Washington people voted the state out of the liquor business and then handed the control of legalized pot to the state of Washington.
Both by initive.
Our state is mob rule, sometimes good, other times not so good.
The inituative process by-passes our “representation” so the wacky whim of the people can rule also at times.
“Washington the Evergreen state”.
No. It’s been studied to death for centuries. You are simply recalling popular counter culture propaganda. It was outlawed because people were indeed getting hurt; because people love and crave intoxication. Hell, who doesn’t? There will, however, be a price paid. I lived it, in the U.S. and abroad. Saw the damage being done to our government, law enforcement, military, and young folks. Crossed paths with young Americans living like beggars, on “Freak Street” in Bombay, and Kathmandu. All there for the “excellent hash, man.” There is no such thing as a “harmless” drug. There will be a price.
It was made long before I was born, or the "counter culture" existed.
There is no such thing as a “harmless” drug. There will be a price.
There will be a price to save everyone from themselves, too.
People in their teens might as well start smoking dope all day. It’s what most young Americans will be doing for the rest of their lives, at least as long as the government checks keep coming.
Fixed it for you.
Wow, impressive, a 1930s church made video that isn’t up to CBS standards, you really blew the lid off this.
Agreed. I gave up trying to save others long ago. I support legalization. Smoke to your heart’s content, with the proviso that I may take whatever measures needed to maintain a firewall between myself and those who make poor choices; be they tobacco users, alcoholics, or dopers, and that the govt. not be charged with cleaning up their mess, and providing social supports...but you and I know that’s not how it works. One way or another, we’re going to pay for it.
Yes, we will.
We'll either have the price of the government trying to save people from the consequences of bad decisions which will be measured in dollars, or the price of making sure they can't make bad decisions which will be measured in rights and freedom.
I was being facetious. One thing’s for sure...we’ve damn well found at least one thing where the “rugged individualists” of the conservative movement WANT Big Government to decide for us.
I have no doubt that, once corporate America gets involved, they’ll send the cannabis industry jobs overseas as well.
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