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David Frum
David Frum’s latest argument in his continuing fact-free war against marijuana legalization (which overlooks prohibition’s enormous negative consequences) seemingly rests on the notion that he is a bad parent.
As far as I can tell, Frum is basically arguing that he needs everyone else to pay for maintaining an expensive prohibition enforcement scheme to make it easier for him to encourage his kids not to make a bad decision. From Frum:
Yet as a parent of three, two exiting adolescence and one entering, I’ve found that the argument that makes the biggest impression is: “Marijuana is illegal. Stay away.” I think many other parents have found the same thing.
When we write social rules, we always need to consider: Who are we writing rules for? Some people can cope with complexity. Others need clarity. Some people will snap back from an early mistake. Others will never recover.
“Just say no” is an easy rule to follow. “It depends on individual risk factors, many of them unknowable in advance” — that rule is not so easy.
To begin with, the data indicates this “just say no” rule Frum is talking about has been a complete failure. America has some of the strictest anti-marijuana laws yet has among the highest rates of marijuana use, according to the UN World Drug Report. Portugal, where all drugs have been decriminalized for a decade, and the Netherlands, where marijuana has been defacto legal for over a generation, both have dramatically lower prevalence of use rates than the United States. Prohibition has done a terrible job of convincing people not to use marijuana.
Even if Frum actually thinks the threat of legal action is an effective parenting tool on this issue, the current marijuana legalization efforts won’t change that. I have yet to meet any serious reform activist pushing for legalization without any age limits. For example, both the new Colorado and Washington State laws set the age limit for marijuana use at 21. Marijuana would still be illegal for his kids. If Frum really thinks this tactic works, he can still tell his children not to use marijuana because doing so would be illegal for them.
15 Comments
Any “wisdom” from Frum is frufru without the fro.
“Skin it back,” said fru to fro.
“You the white side,” says fro to fru, “and I the back.”
You know what the irony is….
In high school it was much easier to get pot for me. In fact just a couple of months back we were joking we should hit the high school when our dealer claimed he was out but had this better stuff for twice the price. (is it just me or did we pay $25 for the same crap in the 80s?)
And regarding “Just Say No”. I only caught the very first stages of the Reagan’s anti-pot campaign before graduating. My gen was much more Fast Times at Ridgemont High than Breakfast Club. What we found in college was that the younger kids coming in as freshman still “partied” just as much but were much more on the downlow. They were very concerned about who saw them etc. One kid in our clique was a big pot head but he would never actually do the purchuse himself. All Nancy Reagan did was create a generation of paranoid, closeted kids.
Again, every discussion of marijuana legalization needs to framed relative to the legal status of alcohol and tobacco. This avoids the useless bickering on abstract pros/cons of marijuana use, and instead focuses on the need for equitable laws governing similar substances.
With that said, how does Frum handle his kids’ usage of alcohol and tobacco, since those substances are legal but regulated? How does he handle their recreational usage of salvia, which is legal and unregulated?
something else….. there was a time in the late 80s or early 90s when there were a series of major pot busts in my area. So pot was a pain to get. What happened was that IMO this directly lead to teens going for the cheap heroin that flooding the cities at the time which lead to a string of kids od’ing.
My gen experienced something similar a few years before. There was no pot one summer because of a major bust but there was cheap cocaine everywhere
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obama’s staff of prohibitionist ‘health researchers’ made this exact claim in December .. just a reminder that dry dopers are liars just like paid-for-ideolouges from the Republican camp
- they are liars and they are keeping known beneficial drugs away from sick people, you know, like facsists ..
see mLaw
and posted here on firedoglake too ..
prohibitionists supporting the private wealth of corps and, at the same time, filling up the jail industrial complex with swarthy ‘folks’ .. so pragmatic and progressive of our ‘choomer in chief’ and the lying liars on ‘the other side’ of the political debate
You know what Mr. Frum?
“It’s illegal” doesn’t keep your kids away from pot.
It keeps them from telling you about it.
You fucking simpleton.
Assuming it were legal, I would give young people all the information available on the behavior effects and physical side effects, let them try it, and discuss peer pressure — so they will know what to expect. The same goes for alcohol. I think the key for a young person’s healthy adjustment to drugs is to view them as a stimulant within a social context, rather than a personal intoxicant for merely “getting high”. Medical marijuana is an entirely different subject, and should be dispensed and regulated differently.
WTF? On what planet is Frum living? Planet Majorus Denialus?
Gimme a break. I’m an old hippie. My ‘rents tole me that shit at least 7 centuries ago. Of course, like Big Dawg Clintin, I never inhaled… much!
What a load. I also remember the frying egg ads about your brains on drugs. That REALLY made a huge difference, as well.
It would be comical for Frum to poop out this drivel if he was doing it a comedy schtick (and if, you know, he had the ability to make it really funny).
As it is, it’s just useless, mind-numbingly teh stoopit b.s.
Agree with a prior comment about how ‘rents need to discuss the uses of various substances, such as booze, cigs, pot & other drugs, with their kids starting early. And make the discussions be reasoned and reasonable. Simply stating that pot is illegal and leaving it at that is ridiculous.
No doubt Frum’s kids do the Eddie Haskell schtick on their idiot father and then go do what they’re gonna doobie.
Well said.
If Marijuana makes bad parents, booze and big pharma drugs make insanely bad parents and in many cases, dead ones.
Someone should tell David Frum that unsupervised use of prescription drugs–which, by definition, are legal–is now considered a much bigger public-health problem among teenagers than their recreational use of marijuana.
David Frum helped sell mass murder as a speechwriter for Boy George Bush. Ethical clarity is not his forte.
Is Frum worried his children won’t be able to get welfare or live in public housing? Surely his children understand that as offspring of the privileged rich in America, their drug busts will be worked out without recourse to incarceration.
They simply don’t tell him they toke, because he’s square, and Canadian.
Yes, this.
David Frum is entering the “Beltway Moderate Republican Zone” of reasonable Republicans who don’t hate gays and don’t want to invade every single country and think some taxes are sometimes ok. I’m concerned this letter is the first sign of a Villager backlash against legalization. So far all the momentum has been on the legalization side — at least for the last few years. The establishment may have woken up and taken notice after the two initiatives passed, and this may be their opening salvo.
I expect more David Brooks, Tom Friedman types to chime in with similary “reasonable” yet completely condescending opnion pieces telling us why we should continue to imprison thousands for behavior no more harmful than what millions do every day in producing, selling and using alcohol and tobacco.
At this point I haven’t seen anything to suggest the Feds are going to tolerate the production and sale of marijuana. We have a big fight ahead to make sure they honor our wishes. I’ve mailed my state representatives to make sure they push the Governor to draft a good set of regulations and fight the Feds to enact them.