David Frum tackles Mark Kleiman's 13 theses on marijuana and my approach to cannabis. The heart of Frum's argument (with my responses):
This has to be the weakest point I've yet heard. Why should we not on these grounds ban many prescription drugs - whose interaction with alcohol is profoundly more dangerous than pot. 20,000 Americans died last year by abusing prescription drugs. No one died of smoking marijuana. It's a physical impossibility. As Sanjay Gupta notes, "Distribution of morphine, the main ingredient in popular painkillers, increased 600% from 1997-2007, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration." And yet David focuses on pot as the truly deadly mixture that must be curtailed. It's the one pain-killer that will never kill you. Bizarre.First, as Kleiman notes, it's an illusion to imagine that marijuana and alcohol users form two separate and distinct camps. It's already true that many of those who drink too much also smoke marijuana, and ditto for many heavy marijuana users. I'll defer to Kleiman's warning about avoiding under-researched overstatements about these interactions, but they exist and could well become much more severe in a legalized world.
Second, as former Obama drug-control official Kevin Sabet pointed out in his bravura appearance on MSNBC's "Up with Chris," it's not as if alcohol law enforcement does not exist. In fact, as he notes, some 2 million arrests occurred last year for alcohol offenses (e.g. public drunkenness, drunk driving, and violation of liquor laws) - not counting actual crimes, such as assault, committed under the influence of alcohol.
And your point is ... what exactly? Those against Prohibition favor laws to punish driving while stoned. And I'm happy to lay a bet with David right now that in those states with legal pot, drunk driving arrests will far outpace stoned-driving arrests. But that is the right balance: it's if your use of an intoxicant presents a threat to others. Right now, alcohol is exponentially more dangerous than pot in this respect.
Third, as with guns and cars, the trend lines on marijuana and alcohol are sloping in different directions. Alcohol abuse is becoming less of a problem for American society in the 2010s, marijuana use, by contrast, is increasing - and increasing particularly among the very youngest users, who should not be using it at all because of the harms to brain development.
Again: what's the point here? The argument for legalization begins with it being a better way to protect kids from easy pot use. David doesn't address this crucial issue. It's Prohibition that drives up teen pot-smoking. And yet David wants more of it. He continues:
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