Marco Rubio Stonewalls on His Pot Smoking—for the Children

In an
interview with ABC News that aired today, Sen. Marco Rubio
(R-Fla.) again refused to say whether he has ever smoked pot, while
implicitly acknowledging that he has:

Here is the problem with that question in American politics. If
you say that you did, suddenly there are people out there saying it
is not a big deal—look at all these successful people who did it.
And I don’t want my kids to smoke marijuana. And I don’t want other
people’s kids to smoke marijuana. I don’t think there is a
responsible way to recreationally use marijuana. On the other side
of it, if you tell people that you didn’t, they won’t believe you.
So it is just a worthless question.

Rubio has his eyes on the 2016 Republican presidential
nomination, and his pot position is reminiscent of the one that
George W. Bush took during his first presidential campaign. Here is
how Bush put it in
a 1998 interview with Newsweek:

If I were you, I wouldn’t tell your kids that you smoked pot
unless you want ’em to smoke pot. I think it’s important for
leaders, and parents, not to send mixed signals. I don’t want some
kid saying, “Well, Governor Bush tried it.”

Rubio, like Bush, won’t say whether he smoked pot, ostensibly
because answering the question would send a bad message to
impressionable teenagers. That response is tantamount to admitting
that he smoked pot, since otherwise there would be no bad message
to worry about. But by claiming to be stonewalling for the
children, Rubio can avoid getting into potentially embarrassing
details.

The implications of Rubio’s argument go beyond his own
biography. Judging from the federal government’s
survey data, a history of pot smoking is normal for men his age
(43 as of May 28). In fact, allowing for a bit of under-reporting,
these data suggest that most American adults born after World War
II have tried marijuana. Those 111 million or so people obviously
include many who nevertheless managed to do well in school, raise
families, and have successful careers, in some cases marked by

extraordinary achievement. Rubio’s logic suggests that we
should conceal this fact from children for as long as possible,
lest they think pot smoking is no big deal. In that light, the
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration is
reckless to make such information publicly available. It is hard to
convince a teenager that smoking pot will end in disaster when he
knows that most people do it at some point.

Rubio’s claim that there is no “responsible way to
recreationally use marijuana” likewise flies in the face of
reality. More than 30 million Americans consume marijuana every
year. According to Rubio, every one of them does so irresponsibly,
regardless of dose or context. Would he say the same thing about
drinkers? If not, why not? There is no logical reason why the same
rules that distinguish responsible drinking from irresponsible
drinking cannot be applied to cannabis consumption. 

Rubio’s justification for self-censorship could extend to many
subjects aside from marijuana. He told ABC’s Jonathan
Karl he realized that being candid about your past can
be harmful after he wrote a
memoir in which he recalled his mediocre performance as a high
school student:

Someone came up to me and said, “You know, I enjoyed your book,
but I want you to know, my son came up to me and said he doesn’t
have to get good grades in high school, because ‘look at Marco
Rubio—he didn’t do well in high school, and look how successful
he’s been.'” And that impacted me.

This sounds like an all-purpose excuse for sanitizing your
biography and refusing to answer questions about touchy subjects: I
can’t tell you whether I was fired for embezzling, because I don’t
want kids to think it’s OK to steal from your employer. I can’t
tell you whether I was arrested for DUI, because I don’t want kids
to think that driving when you’re drunk is no big deal. And so
on.

Oddly, Rubio does not seem to worry about the message his
shiftiness sends to the youth of America.