Easier for Kids to Buy Alcohol or Marijuana?

This morning Mediate highlighted Greg Gutfeld on The Five providing the sane response to Democrat Bob Beckel’s demands that the government waste more of your money to magically reduce the alleged increase in teenage marijuana abuse:

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All of this increase has occurred under prohibition. The reason why is dealers don’t ask for IDs. However, licensed operators and regulators do. Imagine if alcohol was illegal. No one who check for ID’s for booze. So you have this really weird irony: In America, it’s easier to score illegal pot than legal booze simply because it’s regulated. You can also regulate the strength, the power of the pot. It’s easier now for kids to get high because it’s banned. Once it’s legal, then you will lose your license if you give pot to a kid.

The instigator of the debate? This report from The Partnership at DrugFree.Org which claims preposterously that teenage marijuana consumption has raised 80% since 2008.

But how did they get that big number which makes for such a scary headline (and inspires Beckel’s fear-mongering about how pot leads to cocaine)? The real number they’re talking about is much smaller and a non-story:

So that “up 80 percent” only amounts to an increase of 4 percent among so-called “heavy monthly” users in one organization’s survey.

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Let’s pretend for a moment that these numbers actually approximate what’s happening in America today. (And aren’t just propaganda for increasing the size of government.) Why is the question framed as, “How can we spend more taxpayer money to make marijuana more expensive for adults to obtain?” instead of, “What is the matter with the 9% of parents who are unable to control their child’s drug use to such a degree that their teen can get away with smoking weed more than 20 times a month?”

At least when the Kwik Stop sells cigarettes to kids some bureaucrat can come down and issue a big fine.

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