<http://schema.org/articleBody>
" New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote a column today about how he used to smoke weed, but doesn&amp;#039;t really get around to it anymore, so sure, it should be illegal, then, why not? Because that&amp;#039;s the American Dream, right there. Let&amp;#039;s cut to the chase: 750,000 people are arrested each year for marijuana offenses alone. A little over $1.2 billion per year in prison costs alone are spent to house those who are eventually held in prison. That&amp;#039;s separate of law enforcement and court expenses. This is lost freedom and potential future employment over stuff that Brooks used in his youth to create &amp;quot;fond memories of us all being silly together.&amp;quot; This cuts to the crux of the issue: Should we be imprisoning people for bullshit just because our pride is showing? The answer is always no. Brooks has some salient points. Smoking weed before driving is a very dangerous activity that should be criminalized. It already is, just like alcohol. Young people should not be smoking weed because it causes I.Q. loss (and we&amp;#039;ll add to his column\u2014it also stunts growth). There&amp;#039;s already an age limit, just like alcohol.  It&amp;#039;s also massively boring. He&amp;#039;s right. It&amp;#039;s an intensely boring activity, and almost anything is a better way to spend your time. That&amp;#039;s why we should be putting the same weight behind exposing the true side effects of weed as the CDC did with its genuinely effective anti-smoking campaigns of the last three decades. The CDC is good at this now. They can outdo Reefer Madness.  But the police are using it as a reason detain 750,000 Americans every year. And they are using it, as Brooks&amp;#039; own paper reported in June, to disproportionately arrest minorities. African-Americans are somewhere between 10 and 30 times more likely to be arrested than any other race.  This is the true issue here: abuse of power among law enforcement. &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t do this thing, so I guess it should be illegal&amp;quot; is the foundation for every prejudicial thought in history. It is the most reckless and dangerous idea. If you&amp;#039;re a columnist, your only job is to think outside of yourself. Think outside of yourself. Remember, our current president did this in his youth, too. He did it so much, he and his friends had a nickname (The Choom Gang) and an elaborate process for hotboxing called &amp;quot;Total Absorption&amp;quot; that they went through in their Volkswagen van (The Choomwagon). We almost didn&amp;#039;t have this president anymore because The Choom Gang&amp;#039;s dealer, Ray the Dealer, &amp;quot;had been killed with a ball-peen hammer by a scorned gay lover.&amp;quot; All of this is true. Barry turned out fine, but weed is better off in regulated shops than with Ray the Dealer. A considerably worse and creepier drug, salvia, is legal to possess in David Brooks&amp;#039; very own New York City.  It&amp;#039;s a drug so crippling it is nothing short of hysterical, and it&amp;#039;s available for purchase in most states, like over the river in New Jersey. It will render you incapable of gardening.      Ban that. Not because I don&amp;#039;t like it. Ban it because we&amp;#039;ll never have vegetables again. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a32781/i-dont-like-it-doesnt-mean-illegal/>