And this idiot used to run the New York Times?

Friday in the New York Daily News, hack A.M. Rosenthal gives us I Kicked the Habit.

I was only a youngster at the time, but I still remember, to the precise moment, the day many decades ago when some rich kids who lived near a lush New York public garden offered some friends and me a fistful of smokes. Their cigarettes turned out to be marijuana – strong enough to twist a life. Or ruin it. …

I turned out to be a short-time pot addict. I cannot testify now how much I smoked or for how long or what those few days of smoking pot did to me. All I remember is that I smoked until I vomited. …

From the beginning of the foreign assignments, I saw the brown marijuana stubs of my sons and their friends, particularly in New Delhi, the capital of India. I, of course, had long ago quit using marijuana and spent a considerable amount of time shouting at my sons when I thought they were still puffing away. It is a good technique. …

Why am I writing this column? I keep asking myself. Probing myself even just a little, I understand that it is because I never hear my friends or the people at dinner tables talk about drugs, except sometimes as if it were funsy entertainment. I hope that they will talk with each other more often and more deeply, beginning right away.

Drugs must be faced. Let’s face them with the law. And most important of all, let’s face them with love for our children.

This article comes via Hit and Run, and the commments there are entertaining. Most are trying to decide whether A.M. just fabricated the whole story or actually smoked oregano that made him throw up. Others were less generous.
Just reading his editorial makes you realize how around the bend he is, but if you want to know more, check out my earlier article: A.M. Rosenthal, Drug War Stooge.