On dopey David Brooks and legal dope.

First came David Brooks in the New York Times.

Weed: Been There. Done That.

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.

But then we all sort of moved away from it. I don’t remember any big group decision that we should give up weed. It just sort of petered out, and, before long, we were scarcely using it.

And then followed Michelle Goldberg at The Nation.

This Is David Brooks on Drugs

The fact that David Brooks’s wistful, self-satisfied moralism cloaks a serious moral obtuseness is usually hardly worth noting. It’s simply to be expected, as predictable as Tom Friedman bumping into a taxi driver with pithy insights about globalization or Ross Douthat disapproving of his coevals’ sex lives. Still, Brooks’s lament about marijuana legalization is astonishing in its blindness to ruined lives and the human stakes of a serious policy debate. Somehow, he’s written a whole column about the drug war that doesn’t once contain the words “arrest” or “prison.” It’s evidence not just of his own writerly weakness but of the way double standards in the war on drugs shield elites from reckoning with its consequences.

At the third of three publications I commonly peruse, there was more.

Marijuana legalisation: Sort of in defence of David Brooks, by T.N. (The Economist's "Democracy in America" blog)

I FIND today's collective meltdown over David Brooks's bland column on marijuana slightly baffling. My colleague (along with most of the rest of the internet today) is absolutely right to note that Mr Brooks fails to account for the great harms of prohibition, not least the vast racial disparities in arrest and incarceration rates, and the subsequent difficulties for the victims of that injustice in finding work or public housing. It is shameful that a toot of a pipe can trigger consequences like these, and that is why it is such a relief to see parts of America (and other places) taking steps to wind down the war on drugs.

But let's not pretend that relaxing prohibition is cost-free.

I haven't smoked weed for 17 years. What compelled me to quit was an episode during which I accepted the offer of some really good shit in a one-hitter, and found myself deprived of the power of speech for half an hour. If I ever learn who spiked my bowl with animal tranquilizer, there'll be hell to pay. Legalized marijuana with some indication of potency would not be something I purchase very often. If some found its way to my humidor, I'd probably smoke it alone, at home, and refrain from driving.

And play the White Album, for chrissakes. Some things just fit, and just think of all the music released lately that might.