Weed Whackers

RARELY do trial balloons burst so quickly. During the recent British campaign, Tory shadow home secretary Ann Widdecombe had no sooner proposed tougher penalties for marijuana possession than a third of her fellow Tory shadow-cabinet ministers admitted to past marijuana use. Widdecome immediately had to back off. The controversy reflected a split in the party, with the confessors attempting to embarrass Widdecombe politically. But something deeper was at work as well: a nascent attempt to reckon honestly with a drug that has been widely used by baby boomers and their generational successors, a tentative step toward a squaring by the political class of its personal experience with the drastic government rhetoric and policies regarding marijuana.

The American debate hasn’t yet reached such a juncture, even though last year’s presidential campaign featured one candidate who pointedly refused to answer questions about his past drug use and another who—according to Gore biographer Bill Turque—spent much of his young adulthood smoking dope and skipping through fields of clover (and still managed to become one of the most notoriously uptight and ambitious politicians in the country). In recent years, the debate over marijuana policy has centered on the question of whether the drug should be available for medicinal purposes (Richard Brookhiser has written eloquently in NR on the topic). Drug warriors call medical marijuana the camel’s nose under the tent for legalization, and so—for many of its advocates—it is. Both sides in the medical-marijuana controversy have ulterior motives, which suggests it may be time to stop debating the nose and move on to the full camel.

About the Author

Rich Lowry

Rich Lowry is the editor in chief of National Review.

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RARELY do trial balloons burst so quickly. During the recent British campaign, Tory shadow home secretary Ann Widdecombe had no sooner proposed tougher penalties for marijuana possession than a third of her fellow Tory shadow-cabinet ministers admitted to past marijuana use. Widdecome immediately had to back off. The controversy reflected a split in the party, with the confessors attempting to embarrass Widdecombe politically. But something deeper was at work as well: a nascent attempt to reckon honestly with a drug that has been widely used by baby boomers and their generational successors, a tentative step toward a squaring by the political class of its personal experience with the drastic government rhetoric and policies regarding marijuana.

The American debate hasn’t yet reached such a juncture, even though last year’s presidential campaign featured one candidate who pointedly refused to answer questions about his past drug use and another who—according to Gore biographer Bill Turque—spent much of his young adulthood smoking dope and skipping through fields of clover (and still managed to become one of the most notoriously uptight and ambitious politicians in the country). In recent years, the debate over marijuana policy has centered on the question of whether the drug should be available for medicinal purposes (Richard Brookhiser has written eloquently in NR on the topic). Drug warriors call medical marijuana the camel’s nose under the tent for legalization, and so—for many of its advocates—it is. Both sides in the medical-marijuana controversy have ulterior motives, which suggests it may be time to stop debating the nose and move on to the full camel.