Review of Alex Berenson's Tell Your Children: The Truth About Marijuana, Mental Illness, and Violence

Below is my review of Tell Your Children as submitted to the editor of the Sturbridge Times Town & Country Living Magazine.

The review appeared in the May 2019 issue

America Gone to Pot

Tell Your Children: The Truth About Marijuana, Mental Illness, and Violence

By Alex Berenson

Free Press, 2019

Hardcover, 272 Pages

ISBN-10: 1982103663

ISBN-13: 978-1982103668

  

By Richard Morchoe

There is a sense of déjà vu in reading Tell Your Children: The Truth About Marijuana, Mental Illness, and Violence.

Except there isn't.  Déjà vu is the illusion or feeling something has already been experienced.  This is not an illusion.  We are over and over again looking at the question of legalized and medicalized marijuana.

You may ask, hadn't the question gone away?  That was devoutly to be wished and if democracy changed anything, it should have by the miracle of a referendum.  Citizens of the region can head up the street to Leicester and purchase what they feel will make them happy and that was to be an end on to it.

Along comes Alex Berenson, author of Tell Your Children to inform us we have to go back to thinking about what we had wanted to forget.

At the beginning of his book, Mr. Berenson lets us know he was also surprised to be back discussing the subject like the rest of us.  After all, proponents of legalization have had it all their way, or so it seemed.  Studies said cannabis was safe, if not healthy.

Berenson had accepted it.  Heck, he'd toked in Amsterdam.  His mind might never have changed if he were not married to a forensic psychiatrist.

Alex and wife were talking about a case, "the usual horror story, somebody who'd cut up his grandmother" or something.  His wife, who deals with such stuff said, "Of course he was high, been smoking pot his whole life."

Alex replied, "Of course?"  His wife rejoined with, "Yeah, they all smoke."

All the propaganda of the last several years has been pro-cannabis.  The author was incredulous and his wife suggested he read the studies.

Alex Berenson had been a reporter for the New York Times, and had covered the Iraq war, Hurricane Katrina and the drug industry.  He had been away from that for several years having taken up the novel with success.

What his wife had started with the challenge would lead to Tell Your Children.  

Berenson read the studies and statistics and did leg work as well.  He put them together in Tell Your Children, and there is a lot.  Yet, one might accuse him of having a plot, as there is much anecdotal material in the book.  It is necessary from the standpoint that when a horrendous incident occurs, it is not often, if at all, connected to "weed."

One anecdote that is never cited by proponents is the story of Tom Forcade.  Forcade, a pseudonym, was the founder of High Times Magazine.  His journal pushed the liberalization of attitudes to drugs as Playboy did about sex.  Forcade was wildly successful.

Tom may have wanted the country to "mellow out," but he didn't.  

Forcade was transiting to paranoiaville.  Berenson quotes a long diatribe from a 1978 interview about how beleaguered he felt due to the numerous imaginary government agents out to get him.  Forcade lashed out saying "Effectively, I spent the last ten years in jail…" 

Three weeks later, he blew his brains out.

Forcade's staff smoked his ashes at the top of the World Trade Center and went on with the mission without him.  Berenson, the reporter, wrote it without comment.  The lack of any self-awareness from Forcade or his minions said it all.

The other anecdotes are as horrible, but are of tragedies that don't just self-victimize one person. Instead families and relationships can be brutally destroyed and multiple, mostly innocent, lives ended.

One can get into a statistics war where no one escapes the fog, but what seemed most convincing was at the beginning when his wife and he were making conversation.  Evidence unbidden lends weight.

Some statistics argue more convincingly even if not part of research.  When a law changes and rates increase, or decrease sharply over a short span of years, that says more than any study no matter how well planned and executed.  True, the interpretation can be subject to reporting biases, but the stats are there for all sides to chew over.

Your reviewer is not a man for numbers and charts, though he can read the odd table.  Ever cognizant of Mark Twain's dictum, "There are lies, damn lies, and statistics" I realized help would be needed for a more nuanced understanding.

I searched for some opposition to his outlook and it exists.  

Not unexpectedly, Rolling Stone weighed in.  The headline, "Is Alex Berenson Trolling Us With His Anti-Weed Book?" lacked for subtlety.  Had one not paid attention the subtitle, "A former ‘New York Times’ journalist wrote about a “hidden epidemic” cause(sic) by pot — but it seems he got the science wrong" would make sure the message got through.  The article, by Amanda Chicago Lewis, an investigative reporter covering cannabis, could be described as tendentious.

Searching for a more reasonable contrast to the author, I found it on a two and three quarter hour video of Berenson and two men not opposed to using pot at least in some circumstances.  The host, Joe Rogan, admits to being a user and the other guest, Dr. Michael Hart uses it in his practice.

Though there was much talking over each other, and both the host and the doctor made some good points for limited clinical use, Berenson held his own.  Other than on the edges of the discussion, he was far more right than wrong.  Tell Your Children stood up well.

Even though the question of the legal status of marijuana has been debated since the 60s, Alex Berenson has made the case convincingly that, at the least, the conversation has been way too short and the rush to legalize too quick.

What now?  Berenson has no illusions as to where our society stands at this point in time.  He is not for restarting the drug war, but sees decriminalization as reasonable.

Legalization, however, has many bad results not the least for young people.  Per Alex, "Most of all, legalization signals that marijuana is not dangerous and encourages teen use.  The states with the highest rates of youth marijuana use all allow legalized recreational sales or medical sales with very loose conditions."

Berenson has asserted much in his book, but he has backed it up well.  If there were two points your reviewer might want to emphasize, the first would be, Marijuana is not medicine.  The second, marijuana is associated with violence.

People like George Soros, a big funder mentioned in the book and busy bodies like Rick Steeves who contributed to our repeal campaign, should give some thought for what their responsibility is.  Senators Schumer and Booker, who are pushing legalization nationally might as well.  As Mark Anthony said, "The evil that men do lives long after them."

As a postscript, the reviewer has two friends he has known for decades.  They are cannabis users of long standing, and have never been involved in a hint of violence.  That, however, does not invalidate Berenson's work.