CANNABIS CULTURE – Among the list of journalists now admitting they’ve smoked pot is Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post, who also joins the ranks of hypocrites who nonetheless don’t think it should be legal.

In Marcus’s post-legalization column on the subject, she admits:

I have done my share of inhaling, though back in the age of bell-bottoms and polyester. Next time I’m in Colorado, I expect, I’ll check out some Bubba Kush. Why not? They used to warn about pot being a gateway drug, but the only gateway I’m apt to be heading through at this stage is the one to Lipitor.

Yet she continues, “Still, widespread legalization is a bad idea, if an inevitable development” and goes on to quote chapter and verse from government propaganda straight from the ONDCP.

She writes:

I’m not arguing that marijuana is riskier than other, already legal substances, namely alcohol and tobacco. Indeed, pot is less addictive; an occasional joint strikes me as no worse than an occasional drink. If you had a choice of which of the three substances to ban, tobacco would have to top the list. Unlike pot and alcohol, tobacco has no socially redeeming value; used properly, it is a killer.

Yet she concludes: “On balance, society will not be better off with another legal mind-altering substance. In particular, our kids will not be better off with another legal mind-altering substance.”

Oh, for heaven’s sake. That old argument? Nothing about freedom to choose the less harmful substance? As though prohibition is working to keep teens away from pot.

Marcus, a Harvard law graduate from Philadelphia, is supposedly a liberal Democrat and has two teenage daughters.

Write to Marcus at [email protected]

– Article originally published on Tokin Woman.