"For a little while in my teenage years, my friends and I smoked marijuana," writes David Brooks, the pop sociology professor of choice for Republicans hip enough to drive Audis. "It was fun." Was it, David? Was it really? 
 
 Do you think that all of David Brooks' friends, sitting in their rooms in some hellafied suburb with the door locked, had a lot of fun smoking herb with young David, back in the late 70s? Or might it be more accurate to describe young David Brooks as the sort of friend who you smoked with reluctantly, just to be polite, because he might tend to kill your high? Might this question have weighed on the lifted, paranoid minds of David Brooks' youthful friends, all those years ago: "Will this dude grow up and write a New York Times column about this shit one day?" 
 
 Dude. Yes. You think you know Dave, he seems like a fun kid, and then you wake up 30 years later and open the paper and see his byline next to a column about smoking weed with you. "I think those moments of uninhibited frolic deepened our friendships," he writes. 
 
 That's fucking weird, Dave. Chill. 
 
 I think we gave it up, first, because we each had had a few embarrassing incidents. Stoned people do stupid things (that's basically the point). 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 phrases, feeling like a total loser. 
 
 Ha, I remember that. That was awesome. That was the pinnacle of your popularity, Dave. 
 
 We gave it up, second, I think, because one member of our clique became a full-on stoner. He may have been the smartest of us, but something sad happened to him as he sunk deeper into pothead life. 
 
 That's a fucked up thing to say about Krugman. 
 
 Third, most of us developed higher pleasures. Smoking was fun, for a bit, but it was kind of repetitive. Most of us figured out early on that smoking weed doesn't really make you funnier or more creative (academic studies more or less confirm this). 
 
 David Brooks is the sort of kid who would look up academic studies about whether or not smoking weed actually makes you funnier. Dave, dude, you were nice and all, but we all hated getting high with you. Nothing would make you funnier. 
 
 Brooks, a weenie, does not quite have the stones to use his powerful personal story of a descent into depravity to argue that weed should not be legalized; he simply says that legal weed makes it "a bit harder to be the sort of person most of us want to be." (Brooks still lives in fear of his stoner friend showing up at his house uninvited.) The Washington Post's Ruth Marcus, on the other hand, makes the following argument, the logic of which could only be followed by someone who is blazed like a motherfucker: 1) She smoked weed, and she'll probably smoke legal weed when she's next in Colorado; 2) Weed is bad for developing young brains; 3) Kids these days are already smoking a ton of weed; 4) Laws against young people smoking weed will inevitably be ignored; but 5) She is, nevertheless, strongly against the legalization of marijuana, for adults. 
 
 What these two affluent Caucasians are trying to communicate is: I do not care how many young minorities must have their lives ruined by being arrested for weed. I demand we keep in place a law that I acknowledge is purely for show and that I know will be widely ignored, in order to assuage my conscience about the upbringing of white teenagers. 
 
 The weed sucked when they were young anyhow. 
 
 [Photo: AP] ||||| Marijuana legalization may be the same-sex marriage of 2014 — a trend that reveals itself in the course of the year as obvious and inexorable. At the risk of exposing myself as the fuddy-duddy I seem to have become, I hope not. 
 
 This is, I confess, not entirely logical and a tad hypocritical. 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. Washington state will be the next to light up, in a few months. A measure is heading to the ballot in Alaska this year, along with measures in Oregon and California. As with gambling — also a bad idea, by the way — more states are certain to feel the peer pressure for tax dollars and tourist revenue. 
 
 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. 
 
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 So the reason to single out marijuana is the simple fact of its current (semi-)illegality. 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. 
 
 As the American Medical Association concluded in recommending against legalization in November, “Cannabis is a dangerous drug and as such is a public health concern.” It added: “It is the most common illicit drug involved in drugged driving, particularly in drivers under the age of 21. Early cannabis use is related to later substance use disorders.” 
 
 And this point, for me, is the most convincing: “Heavy cannabis use in adolescence causes persistent impairments in neurocognitive performance and IQ, and use is associated with increased rates of anxiety, mood, and psychotic thought disorders.” 
 
 A 2012 study of more than 1,000 New Zealanders from birth to age 38 found that “persistent cannabis use was associated with neuropsychological decline broadly across domains of functioning, even after controlling for years of education.” Long-term users saw an average decline of eight IQ points. 
 
 Once again, teenage toking was the problem. The decrease in IQ was linked only to those with adolescent marijuana use, not those who started in adulthood. 
 
 “Impairment was concentrated among adolescent-onset cannabis users, with more persistent use associated with greater decline,” the study reported. For those who started as teens, stopping didn’t fully restore functioning. The results, the study concluded, “are suggestive of a neurotoxic effect of cannabis on the adolescent brain.” 
 
 Please do not argue that Colorado’s law, like those proposed elsewhere, bans sales to those under 21. Ha! I have teenage children. The laws against underage drinking represent more challenge to overcome than barrier to access. 
 
 Recreational marijuana sales are underway in Colorado, attracting a new type of tourism to the state. Govbeat's Reid Wilson breaks down four things pot tourists should know about the new laws. (Davin Coburn/The Washington Post) 
 
 And although alcohol seems to be the teen drug of choice among the adolescents I know, the more widely available marijuana becomes, the more minors will use it. If seniors in fraternities can legally buy pot, more freshmen and sophomores will be smoking more of it. 
 
 And it’s not as if the kids need encouragement. By the time they have graduated from high school, nearly half have tried smoking pot; 16.5 percent of eighth-graders have. More alarming, the number who perceive great risk from regular use has been plummeting, from 58 percent to 40 percent among 12th-graders, according to a study funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse. 
 
 And, that study says, for those who trumpet tight controls on sales to minors, a third of 12th-graders who live in states with medical marijuana and who have used the drug in the past year report that one source is another person’s prescription. Another 6 percent have their own Rx. 
 
 Throwing people in jail for smoking pot is dumb and wasteful. Given changing public attitudes — for the first time last year, a majority of Americans supported legalization — Colorado and Washington are apt to be the vanguard states, not the outliers. 
 
 If this doesn’t make you nervous, you are smoking something. Maybe even legally. 
 
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– Two veteran columnists weigh in on the legalization of pot in Colorado and in Washington state, and neither is happy about it: David Brooks: He smoked for a while as a teen. "It was fun," he writes in the New York Times. "I have some fond memories of us all being silly together. I think those moments of uninhibited frolic deepened our friendships." But he and his friends "aged out," moved on, and gave up pot after some "embarrassing incidents," generally deciding it wasn't how they wanted to live their lives. And now he's worried these laws send the wrong message. "In legalizing weed, citizens of Colorado are, indeed, enhancing individual freedom. But they are also nurturing a moral ecology in which it is a bit harder to be the sort of person most of us want to be." Ruth Marcus: She, too, did her "share of inhaling," but, she, too, is worried about legalization. In particular, she cites an AMA study asserting that teens who indulge might end up with lower IQs and moodier countenances. "On balance, society will not be better off with another legal mind-altering substance," she writes in the Washington Post. "In particular, our kids will not be better off with another legal mind-altering substance." Counterpoint: At Gawker, Hamilton Nolan reads them both and sums up: "What these two affluent Caucasians are trying to communicate is: I do not care how many young minorities must have their lives ruined by being arrested for weed. I demand we keep in place a law that I acknowledge is purely for show and that I know will be widely ignored, in order to assuage my conscience about the upbringing of white teenagers."