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David Frum
As someone who believes that marijuana prohibition has done significantly more harm than good, I would love to have a serious data-driven national debate about legalization. But unfortunately that is not possible when prohibitionists think it is acceptable to simply make up facts.
This anti-legalization article in The Daily Beast by David Frum is an egregious recent example of that phenomenon.
Lets go point by point. From David Frum:
Although data are difficult to come by, it’s generally scientifically accepted that Americans smoke more marijuana per person than any other people on earth.
While marijuana use is very common in the United States, this claim is not borne out by facts. According to the UN 2012 World Drug Report’s best estimates, several countries including Italy and New Zealand have slightly higher prevalence of use. Since the United States is near the top, I would let this slide if it weren’t being used to justify a broader point he tries to make with no factual basis.
Frum goes on to say:
And really, why should that be surprising? Americans drink more than other people, eat more, crash their cars more, and shoot themselves (and each other) more. Name a risky behavior, and the United States is, if not No. 1, then usually in the top two. Marijuana use is just one more example of a consistent national pattern.
This is simply not true. Americans actually drink relatively little compared to most first world countries. According to the World Health Organization, America isn’t even among the top 50 countries for alcohol consumption per capita. Almost every single European country drinks more. Similarly, I have no idea how Frum justifies his claim about car crashes. Again, according to the World Health Organization, the United States has relatively few car related deaths per capita compared to the rest of the world.
Finally, while Frum didn’t specifically mention tobacco use, it is generally considered one of the most risky behaviors among public health experts. America has a relatively low rate of cigarette smoking by international standards. Effectively, the premise of Frum’s “American excess” argument is nonsense unsupported by data.
I would welcome a real debate about the policy benefits of legalization because I think that most people if they take an honest look at the data would conclude that with tight regulation it is the best public policy option. But that is not going to happen when one side is simply making up their own reality.
I guess it says something about how weak the argument against marijuana legalization is if its opponents feel the need to make up facts to justify opposing it.
Photo by Howard County Library System under Creative Commons license
9 Comments
By just invoking “David Frum” , that serves as an automatic disclaimer for anything that follows.
I always assumed that liberals’ opposition to legalization was based, as most of their policy stances are, in cowardice. Now, it can’t even be justified by cowardice.
I don’t think David Frum is much of a liberal.
Also, the US has a murder rate lower than the world average, about 6 per 100K compared with 9 per 100k (UN stats). Mexico, Brazil, Jamaica and many others are far more murderous than the U.S. Highly emotionalized issues tend to short circuit annoying truths that interfere with preconceptions. Frum isn’t even very good at it either..
I decided to remove my scare quotes, but these days, I’m afraid he’s what passes for a liberal in the national “debate.”
Americans (by and large) watch TV more than they (by and large) do anything else except breathe. Frum has to watch a lot of TV so he can be tuned in to the American psyche. It’s a safe bet that he gets his notions about Americans’ behaviors from the sensationalist, narrowly skewed TV programming. He’s savvy enough to realize that most TV-watchers have the same perceptions. Duh.
does David Frum hate America?
But you see, David doesn’t have to be correct or even in the ball park, statistically speaking. David has been anointed and blessed as a VERY SERIOUS PERSON. By other VERY IMPORTANT PEOPLE. Why, I’ll bet other deep thinkers who have taken Elementary Probability and Statistics at a major university, and receive foundation money, could fudge numbers pretty similar to these. They would be way off the mark as well, but hey, that’s beside the point, really. What is important, really, is control and its’ favorite sidekick, fear. For control makes the snowflake eventually into the snowball ( insert physics and hydrology here ) and, eventually, that rolls down hill and squashes everything in its’ path. So, even if you don’t live any where a snowy mountaintop; be afraid, be very afraid. Because SERIOUS and IMPORTANT PEOPLE will fudge the numbers, scare you, control the debate and lie through their teeth if necessary. And to maintain the police and security state, it is always necessary. ” It is hard for a man ( or woman ) to be against something they are being very well paid, to be for. ” I think I have statistics to backup this postulation(axiom). Just doin’ the math as David, Bill and Barack would want me to.
One more point worth mentioning: there seems to be little correlation between the severity of penalties for using marijuana and the prevalence of use. U.S. jurisdictions are on the harsh end of the scale, yet a higher percentage of Americans use the drug than residents of Portugal or The Netherlands, which are on the lenient side. (There also doesn’t seem to be a difference in prevalence between states like California that treat simple possession as a non-criminal infraction and those that still treat it as a criminal offense.)
As for Frum’s traffic crash data, not only were there one-third fewer traffic deaths in the U.S. in 2011 than 1971 but the number of deaths per 100 million miles travel stood at an all-time low of 1.11, less than one-fourth the 1971 figure. Maybe we’re better at managing risky activity than Frum thinks we are.