Pot-Smoking David Brooks Makes An Interesting Argument Against Legalization

 

"[L]ike the vast majority of people who try drugs, we aged out. We left marijuana behind. I don't have any problem with somebody who gets high from time to time, but I guess, on the whole, I think being stoned is not a particularly uplifting form of pleasure and should be discouraged more than encouraged...In legalizing weed, citizens of Colorado are, indeed, enhancing individual freedom. But 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." David Brooks in The New York Times.

Reefer madness! Reefer madness! "Marijuana legalization may be the same-sex marriage of 2014 -- a trend that reveals itself in the course of the year as obvious and inexorable. At the risk of exposing myself as the fuddy-duddy I seem to have become, I hope not. This is, I confess, not entirely logical and a tad hypocritical. At the risk of exposing myself as not the total fuddy-duddy of my children's dismissive imaginings, I have done my share of inhaling, though back in the age of bell-bottoms and polyester." Ruth Marcus in The Washington Post.