Meet the Press Panelists Can't Stop Laughing About Marijuana Prohibition

New York Times columnist
David Brooks and Washington Post columnist

Ruth Marcus produced two of the year’s most embarrassing
commentaries on marijuana legalization, so naturally they were
invited to
discuss that issue on Meet the Press yesterday.
They did not disappoint.

The most annoying thing about the segment is the jokey tone that
Brooks establishes as soon as host David Gregory asks him about the
recent
New York Times editorial calling for the repeal
of marijuana prohibition at the federal level:

Brooks: I disagree with them on the larger
issue. I don’t know what they’ve been smoking up there in the
office. The haze is…

At this point Brooks is interrupted by uproarious laughter from
Gregory and the other panelists, who apparently have never heard
this ancient joke before. Despite that disadvantage, they
understand Brooks’ point: The position taken by his colleagues at
the Times is so absurd that they must have
high when they wrote the editorial! Just like everyone who
opposed alcohol prohibition must have been drunk! Trying
to join in the mirth making, PBS
NewHour anchor Judy Woodruff chimes in with, “They
didn’t inhale.” Then, having finally understood the gravamen of
Brooks’ jest, she adds, “Maybe they did.”

Perhaps we should cut Woodruff some slack, since she later
confesses, “When I think of grass, I think of something to walk on.
I think of pot as something you put a plant in.” This provokes more
merriment. It also raises the question: Exactly how old
is Judy Woodruff? According to Wikipedia, she was
born in 1946, which means she graduated college in the late 1960s.
Hmm.

And the jokes keep coming:

Marcus: It is a vast social experiment.
We do not know the outcome, except that the best evidence is that
if you use marijuana as a teenager regularly, eight IQ points…and I
don’t know about the rest of the table, but I don’t have eight to
lose.

I believe here. But wait, there’s more:

Woodruff: I think it’s important to have
the debate, but I wonder what’s the rush.

Marcus: Pardon the pun.

I don’t think I will. Yet when the panelists turn serious,
their contributions are even lamer. Both Brooks and Marcus, while
agreeing with those crazy potheads at
the Times that states should be
free to set their own marijuana policies, argue that legalization
is a mistake…because of the children:

Brooks: I just don’t think we can
sanction—say for adults, fine, but if you’re 18, you can’t do it.
That’s just not gonna work, I don’t think….

Marcus: I think for states to decide to
go the full legalization route is a problem, precisely for my mommy
reason, that you can say it’s OK for adults, but everybody knows
who has teenagers like me that…the fact that alcohol is legal
increases their access to alcohol. Making marijuana readily,
legally available will increase their—my kids are at home, laughing
at me.

Maybe they are laughing at her because they see the folly
in arguing that anything deemed inappropriate for children should
be forbidden to adults as well. In any case, Brooks’ concerns
extend beyond children:

I don’t think the government should be sanctioning
activity that most of us mature out of, most of us age out of it. I
just don’t think it’s the way we want to spend our
minds….

The country is getting more libertarian on a lot of these
issues, and it’s “everyone should do what they want.” But we’re
part of a community; we’re part of a culture, where we’re
[affected] by each other’s views and each other’s values, and to me
there’s some role for the government playing some role in
restraining some individual choice, just to create a culture of
healthiness. 

As Mediaite‘s Evan McMurry
points out, the panelists never acknowledge the human cost of
forcibly imposing their pharmacological prejudices on their fellow
Americans. Although the total has declined from a
peak of more than 858,000 in 2009, police in the
United States still arrest
hundreds of thousands of people for marijuana offenses every year
(about 750,000 in 2012), the vast majority for simple possession.
It’s true that most of these people do not spend much time behind
bars. But the inconvenience, humiliation, financial drain, and
ancillary costs of being treated like a criminal should not be
forgotten amid all the marijuana-induced giggles. Nor should the
fact that people can and do receive lengthy prison sentences,
including life, merely for
growing or selling a product that you can openly buy at
state-licensed stores in Colorado and Washington. Funny
stuff.