In today's NYT* David Brooks tries to pour bong-water all over the happy people in Colorado and nationwide who are celebrating the melting of the Drug War iceberg that has, not just kept people away from the fun of marijuana use, but has in fact decimated lives and corrupted and practically bankrupted our criminal justice system for almost fifty years!
Brooks really phoned this one in. Legalization is not 'encouragement' Mr. Brooks. Society is not encouraging people to smoke cigarettes are we? Of course not. We keep them legal to avoid a criminal underground from prospering and we use tax revenue to promote 'not smoking cigarettes' and help pay for the sickness caused by their use.
The entire war on drugs and especially marijuana represent the most tragic self-inflicted wound in American history. It has torn the fabric of US society (and all of the Americas for that fact) more than did the 13 years of prohibition and even more than the Civil War, since it has gone on for decades longer (and unlike that cause, the 'bad guys' here were our own government, not to mention that it has re-ignited racial tensions that had begun to be smoothed out.
Worst of all, Brooks doesn't even attempt to justify his pot use as a young adult accompanied by his never fighting to at least stop imprisonment for something he looks back on having done as merely childish. Brooks is one spoiled white writer!
http://ChipShirley.Com/
*http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/03/opinion/brooks-weed-been-there-done-that.html?_r=0
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