drugs

8 Other Thought Leaders Who Have Smoked Pot

Journalist David Brooks
Once a stoner. Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images

This post was originally published on January 3, 2014.

David Brooks lit up the Internet (sorry) with his column on marijuana legalization, “Weed: Been There. Done That,” in which he admitted to once being young. “For a little while in my teenage years, my friends and I smoked marijuana. It was fun,” he wrote. “I have some fond memories of us all being silly together. I think those moments of uninhibited frolic deepened our friendships.” But then he grew up: “I don’t have any problem with somebody who gets high from time to time, but I guess, on the whole, I think being stoned is not a particularly uplifting form of pleasure and should be discouraged more than encouraged.”

The argument sparked (sorrrrry) countless responses, from jeers to serious rebuttals, but more than anything it gave otherwise straitlaced pundits and reporters — Thought Leaders, you might call them — a chance to get personal with their weed stories. Some offered their experiences, and how it colors their views on decriminalization or legalization, in their own pieces; others we asked, and a few even responded. Their stories, which are not endorsements, are below.

Update: Now Brooks’s colleague, columnist Maureen Dowd, has gotten in on the action, handling her weed chocolate so poorly that she “curled up in a hallucinatory state for the next eight hours.”

I was thirsty but couldn’t move to get water. Or even turn off the lights. I was panting and paranoid, sure that when the room-service waiter knocked and I didn’t answer, he’d call the police and have me arrested for being unable to handle my candy.

I strained to remember where I was or even what I was wearing, touching my green corduroy jeans and staring at the exposed-brick wall. As my paranoia deepened, I became convinced that I had died and no one was telling me.

Glenn Greenwald, journalist:

Yes, I’ve smoke marijuana — mostly in college, where my usage rate was probably pretty typical for college students, and then also periodically throughout adulthood, though with very decreasing frequency as I get older, mostly because I just don’t enjoy it that much anymore. I don’t remember the last time I did: it’s been quite a while.

Of course, one’s personal experience with anything makes it much harder for others to demonize it effectively. So I’m sure that my personal experiences back then with marijuana affect my views on legalization to some degree, as I’m convinced it’s far less harmful and dangerous than lots of legal substances, including alcohol.

That said, I view the entire Drug War as one of America’s worst sins, if not its singularly worst evils, and particularly find the idea of putting people into cages to punish them for the substances they ingested (marijuana or anything else) to be unspeakably cruel, wasteful and irrational.

Dave Weigel, political reporter at Slate:

Actual confession: I smoke pot. I’ve never bought it, but I’ve had it when friends bring it out to enliven a party. Frankly, I’m a terrible pothead. Having never really smoked cigarettes, I’m all thumbs at lighting a pipe or joint. The last time I smoked, earlier this week, the product overcame the wan barriers of my tolerance and I passed out on a kitchen floor—actually a pretty excellent goodbye-to-the-old-year metaphor, though somewhat embarrasing at the time. (UPDATE: Should note that the time before this, pot was part of a lovely evening of conversation and record-playing. It’s like any other drug, and the experiences vary.)

Josh Barro, politics editor at Business Insider:

Lately I only smoke marijuana a few times a year. I smoked it for the first time in high school and smoked more regularly when I was in college.

The period of my life when I smoked weed most regularly was the summer of 2003. I spent that summer as a participant in the Charles G. Koch Summer Fellow program, which put 40 libertarian college and grad students together in the same apartment complex in Northern Virginia for 10 weeks, reading Hayek and interning at right-of-center policy organizations. We smoked a lot of weed; I smoked up several times a week through most of the summer. One time, my Koch roommates and I built a gravity bong, which I don’t recommend; that led to one of the few times in my life that I got so high I felt ill.

I don’t smoke as much as I used to in part because my friends smoke less, and in part because I don’t live in a dorm anymore. I’m not going to smoke marijuana alone, and usually if I’m meeting up with my friends it’s out at a bar or restaurant or some other place where smoking up would be inappropriate. But I still like weed. It provides a relaxing and mild drug experience (gravity bong situation excepted).

Obviously, some people have more negative experiences with marijuana than I do. I’ve known some people who were less ambitious and productive (and, ultimately, happy) because of their marijuana use. But that’s a risk with any drug, and a much bigger risk with alcohol than with marijuana.

Prohibition imposes enormous costs on society and individuals in an effort to reduce those negative social effects, and those costs fall disproportionately on the sort of people who do not have columns in the New York Times. Also, and this tends to get lost in the debate, prohibition imposes costs on people who would simply like to engage in their non-problem marijuana use for fun. We recognize that one of the costs of banning alcohol is that people like drinking alcohol and it’s bad (all else equal) to stop people from doing things they like. The fact that marijuana is fun for a lot of people is actually one of the most compelling arguments for legalizing it.

Ruth Marcus, Washington Post columnist:

At the risk of exposing myself as not the total fuddy-duddy of my children’s dismissive imaginings, 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.

Still, widespread legalization is a bad idea, if an inevitable development.

Chris Hayes, MSNBC host:

Jeffrey Goldberg, Bloomberg View columnist:

In order to comment on the marijuana legalization debate, it is apparently necessary to confess to your own history of pot-smoking first, so here goes: While in college, I experimented with marijuana. To be precise, I conducted 132 experiments with marijuana. It might have been 374 experiments. I’m not sure, because I lost my notes. The reason I conducted so many experiments is that I wanted to make sure I could replicate my findings accurately. I was attending the University of Pennsylvania at the time, and standards there are rigorous. One of my findings, by the way, was that I really likeFunyuns.

Part of me wishes that I could say that I regret these experiments.

Ben Smith, editor of Buzzfeed:

To borrow a line from President Obama, Buzzfeed is something I did in college at two in the morning.

8 Other Thought Leaders Who Have Smoked Pot