EVER since Colorado and Washington announced their intent to legalise recreational marijuana, there has been a lot of reallysmartwriting speculating about the effects of those policy changes, both for the people of those two states and for broaderfederalismquestions. In fact, the general level of political discussion surrounding Colorado, Washington and cannabis has been so elevated that at times I've wondered: where has all the other discussion gone? You know what I mean: where's the condescending paternalism, the blindness to unintended consequences, the zeal to punish, and the Puritan hostility toward non-productive pleasure and reflectiveness that have characterised American drug policy for the past hundred years? Step forward, David Brooks! In this morning's column Mr Brooks informs us that once upon a time he, David Brooks, smoked the demon weed, and it was not good. Well, it was kind of good at first (I think that's what he means by "these moments of uninhibited frolic deepened our friendships", referring to the times when he and his high-school friends got high) but then it was so not good. He got over it. He got past it. Sometimes it made him do embarrassing things: "I smoked one day during lunch and then had to give a presentation in English class. I stumbled through it, incapable of putting together simple sentences, feeling like a total loser." To me, that sounds like one of those memories that will bring smiles to faces at reunions, especially if the person so affected eventually becomes a best-selling author and New York Times columnist. But for Mr Brooks, "it is one of those embarrassing memories that pop up unbidden at 4 in the morning." Eventually, he and his friends (except for one who "sunk deeper into pothead life") "developed higher pleasures" and left the weed behind.

And so, because Mr Brooks believes that "being stoned is not a particularly uplifting form of pleasure and should be discouraged more than encouraged", Colorado and Washington are wrong. I think that's what he means when he writes that "they are nurturing a moral ecology in which it is a bit harder to be the sort of person most of us want to be" (nb: for "most of us want to be" please read "David Brooks wants most of us to be"). What's more, Mr Brooks believes he is taking a particularly brave stand in defending the status quo: "The people who debate these policy changes usually cite the health risks users would face or the tax revenues the state might realize. Many people these days shy away from talk about the moral status of drug use because that would imply that one sort of life you might choose is better than another sort of life." Mr Brooks has built a sparkling career on having no such shyness.

Absent from Mr Brooks's column is any sort of reflection on the costs of prohibition. For a columnist who struts and puffs out his chest over his own moral bravery, that is a shameful absence. Those costs are why many of us support the legalisation of marijuana: not so we can get legally blazed as often as we like (as it happens, many of us share Mr Brooks's general antipathy for excessive marijuana use, though I would note that every one of his criticisms of marijuana could apply just as well to excessive or untimely drinking, or indeed excessive or untimely television-watching, and I see no calls from him to reinstate alcohol prohibition or ban TVs), but so America can stop lockingpeopleup and ruiningtheirlives for a crime that even Mr Brooks admits is not really a big deal ("I don't have any problem with somebody who gets high from time to time," he writes). He is right that "laws profoundly mold culture," and the sort of culture America's marijuana laws have molded is one in which blacks are four times likelier than whites to be arrested for the same (victimless) crime; in which those arrested for that victimless crime lose their driver's licenses, their eligibility for public housing, employment opportunities and indeed their futures. Mr Brooks is fine with all that, but apparently the rest of us are morally blinded by all the pot smoke.

Read on:Sort of in defence of David Brooks

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