Pat Robertson Renounces Marijuana Legalization Because ‘the Little Kids Are Getting High’

The Washington
Post notes
that televangelist Pat Robertson, who endorsed marijuana
legalization in 2012, has changed his mind. On his Christian
Broadcasting Network today, Robertson had this to say about
legalization in Colorado:

“Rocky Mountain High.” [John Denver] was talking about the nice
clean air in the Rocky Mountains. He wasn’t talking about what’s
happening in a state that legalized marijuana. Now everybody—the
little kids are getting high. They’ve got marijuana
cupcakes and marijuana soft drinks. Marijuana gummy bears! Oh,
do you want your little eighth-grader to be stoned when he goes to
school? Well, welcome to Colorado, where pot is legal….

You know, I have been one that has been very much against the
incredible incarceration rate in the United States of America,
where we have made this country a nation of criminals. We have the
highest incarceration rate of any country on the face of the earth,
more so than mainland China, more so than Russia. And what are we
doing? We are locking people up for the possession of marijuana. So
what I have wanted, and I think it’s a right cause, is the
decriminalization of marijuana.

But apparently the next step is the legalization of it, which is
a totally different matter. It’s the full-scale spread of this
stuff, and it is not good for people’s health. It’s destroying
their minds and destroying their lungs. And the addiction is pretty
heavy, and it’s also a gateway drug into the heavier stuff like
cocaine and crack—whatever else is out there besides heroin, etc.
There’s so many ways. They’re sniffing glue. These kids find more
ways to destroy themselves. But the citizens of Colorado have got
to face the issue. Decriminalization…that’s smart. But opening
the doors so little kids can buy marijuana gummy bears…

Contrary to what Robertson said today, he did not merely support
decriminalizing possession of marijuana; he
told The New York Times in 2012 that “we should
treat marijuana the way we treat beverage alcohol,” which means
legalizing production and sale. It is true that his concerns about
marijuana policy, which he
began to voice in 2010, mostly had to do with excessive
penalties for users. As Mike Riggs
noted here in 2012, Robertson was (and clearly still is) under
the misimpression that a large share of drug offenders in American
prisons are there because they were caught with small amounts of
pot. That is clearly not true. If Robertson is truly concerned
about our country’s appallingly high incarceration rate (and he
certainly seems to be), he should be talking about
people serving years or decades for offenses involving “the
harder stuff” (as well as marijuana production and sale). 

None of which means that  it’s fair or sensible to continue
arresting hundreds of thousands of cannabis consumers every year.
Even if they typically do not spend much time behind bars, they
suffer the humiliation, inconvenience, and cost of being treated
like criminals, including collateral penalties such as lasting
damage to their employment prospects. Robertson still seems to
think that people should not be arrested for using marijuana. But
if so, why should people be arrested for supplying that marijuana?
If consumption is not properly treated as a crime, neither is
aiding and abetting consumption. That is the moral logic of moving
from decriminalization of use to decriminalization of cultivation
and distribution, a logic Robertson seemed to be following until
now.

Robertson’s reasons for backpedaling make no sense. The
marijuana edibles that offend him have been legally available to
patients in Colorado for years. The only difference now is that
adults 21 and older can purchase such products without obtaining a
doctor’s note. Contrary to what Robertson seems to think,
state-licensed pot stores do not serve 20-year-olds, let alone
eighth-graders or “little kids.” They are punctilious about

checking customers’ IDs to make sure they are at least 21. And
as I
pointed out last week, so far there is no evidence that the
loosening of Colorado’s marijuana laws, which began in 2001, has
led to more underage consumption. 

Robertson may even be wrong about John Denver, who discussed his own
use of marijuana (as well as LSD and cocaine) in his 1994
autobiography Take Me Home. It is a matter of debate whether
“Rocky Mountain High”—which includes the line, “Friends around the
campfire and everybody’s high”—is merely about the beauty of a
meteor shower in the Rockies.