MarijuanaNews.com : Lou Dobbs Plays Arthur Andersen to The Drug War’s Enron. A Week of Prohibitionist Propaganda And 91% Of His “Pseudosophisticate” Viewers Still Vote for Decrim.

Posted August 11, 2003
Analysis by Richard Cowan

(MarijuanaNews
note: I have been a fan of Lou Dobbs for many years, and recently I have been
very pleased that he has called for the vigorous prosecution of the sort of
mega-frauds that have wrecked companies like Enron and Worldcom. The damage done
by these scandals goes far beyond the numerous immediate victims, the employees,
shareholders, creditors, etc. Fraud on such an enormous scale damages the whole
capitalist system, and ultimately everyone.

One
of the great tragedies of these frauds was the wrecking of the venerable
accounting firm Arthur Andersen. Without the acquiescence and incompetence of
Andersen’s auditors, these frauds would not have been possible, or at least
would have been unmasked early enough to save billions of dollars, and perhaps
even the failed companies themselves. One of the greatest problems was that the
auditors had developed a conflict of interest and were really not representing
the shareholders interests, but those of the corrupt management, and
consequently they did not ask the “hard questions” – as accountants and
journalists are supposed to do.

In
short, it is quite clear that Dobbs understands the importance of integrity to
society in general and the damage that is done by large-scale fraud. That is why
I was not just disappointed by his CNN reports and his syndicated column last
week about the Drug War. I was genuinely surprised. Anyone with a degree in
economics and a background in business really should know better.

In
his “mission statement” for his column, Dobbs himself says, “My column
covers economics, politics, the military, science, education and society itself,
because the news events and the issues of our day have the potential to threaten
our quality of life. They’re profoundly important to us all and more so today
than at any time in recent memory. My objective is to give analysis and
perspective to those issues critical to our well being, in the context of
American values and traditions. This column is for anyone who’s interested in
and engaged in the world, and understands the importance of these topics and
issues.”

In
any case, if someone were to try to sell stocks and bonds using the sort of data
presented by Dobbs and his guests, Dobbs would denounce them as crooks and
demand that they be prosecuted, and would call for their auditors to be fired
and prosecuted. It was both incompetent and dishonest, and offered even more
proof that cannabis prohibition is not just a failure but a counterproductive
fraud.

See
The
Police Fraud. Someone Is Lying. Marking The 30th Anniversary Of An Article in
National Review. What if Don Quixote Was Right? Analysis by Richard Cowan

For the most part I will
confine my “audit” to the coverage of cannabis, but one of the greatest
problems with Dobbs’ coverage was that there was generally no distinction
drawn between cannabis and hard drugs, prescription drug misuse and even
alcohol. It was a classic “bait and switch.”
See

“Mom,
Dad, What are Drugs?”

Why
legalizing drugs is dopey idea
By Lou Dobbs

From
http://www.nydailynews.com/business/story/107792p-97441c.html

We’ve
spent hundreds of billions of dollars in law enforcement, prevention and
treatment since former President Richard Nixon declared war on drugs in 1971.
Yet the use of illicit substances continues to plague our country.

(MarijuanaNews
note: Does use constitute abuse? How do the problems caused by the use of
illicit substances compare with those caused by the use of licit substances?
Consider:
“A study prepared by The Lewin Group for the National Institute on Drug
Abuse and the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism estimated the
total economic cost of alcohol and drug abuse to be $245.7 billion for 1992.
Of this cost, $97.7 billion* was due to drug abuse. This estimate includes
substance abuse treatment and prevention costs as well as other healthcare
costs, costs associated with reduced job productivity or lost earnings, and
other costs to society such as crime and social welfare. The study also
determined that these costs are borne primarily by governments (46 percent),
followed by those who abuse drugs and members of their households (44 percent).

The
1992 cost estimate has increased 50 percent over the cost estimate from 1985
data. The four primary contributors to this increase were (1) the epidemic of
heavy cocaine use (2) the HIV epidemic (3) an eightfold increase in state and
Federal incarcerations for drug offenses, and (4) a threefold increase in crimes
attributed to drugs.

More
than half of the estimated costs of drug abuse were associated with drug-related
crime. These costs included lost productivity of victims and incarcerated
perpetrators of drug- related crime (20.4 percent); lost legitimate
production due to drug-related crime careers (19.7 percent); and other costs of
drug-related crime, including Federal drug traffic control, property
damage, and police, legal, and corrections services (18.4 percent). Most
of the remaining costs resulted from premature deaths (14.9 percent), lost
productivity due to drug-related illness (14.5 percent), and healthcare
expenditures (10.2 percent).

The
White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP)** conducted a study
to determine how much money is spent on illegal drugs that otherwise would
support legitimate spending or savings by the user in the overall economy. ONDCP
found that, between 1988 and 1995, Americans spent $57.3 billion on drugs,
broken down as follows: $38 billion on cocaine, $9.6 billion on heroin, $7
billion on marijuana, and $2.7 billion on other illegal drugs and on the misuse
of legal drugs

*
This estimate includes illicit drugs and other drugs taken for non-medical
purposes. It does not include nicotine.”
From
http://165.112.78.61/Infofax/costs.html

Thus,
we can see from these numbers that the cost of alcohol abuse alone exceeds the
costs of all aspects of illicit drug use, including the costs related to
prohibition.
See
The
Reality Of the Marijuana Situation In Canada: Unequal Injustice.
Alcohol Costs Canadian Health Almost 100 Times As Much As Marijuana.
Tobacco: Almost 200 As Much – Article and Editorial

In
fact, most of the costs attributed to illicit drug use are directly related to
their being illegal, not to the social and health problems intrinsic to their
use.

Consider:
“Despite
the public attention paid to illegal drug use, the most harm, by far, actually
is derived from legal drugs. The drug nicotine, usually ingested in cigarette
smoke, causes about 400,000 premature deaths every year in the United States. In
addition to killing smokers, sidestream, or secondhand, smoke (smoke inhaled by
bystanders) is responsible for about 53,000 annual deaths. Widespread publicity
about the dangers of cigarette smoke has not deterred the more than 50 million
Americans who continue to use cigarettes.

The
financial cost of nicotine addiction is enormous. In terms of medical care and
time lost from work, the U.S. Congress Office of Technology Assessment estimates
that smoking costs more than $140 billion every year (more than $4,400 a
second).

As
for alcohol, the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism estimates
that two of three adults drink alcoholic beverages and that one of ten adults is
a problem drinker or an alcoholic. Alcohol-related diseases and accidents claim
about 100,000 lives annually, and cost society anywhere from $40 to $100
billion. [Exact estimates are hard to calculate.]

Who
said that? Some legalizer? No, that is from
The Columbia
University College of Physicians and Surgeons. )

The
federal government spends nearly $1 billion a month on this war, but users spend
more than five times that much to buy drugs.
(MarijuanaNews
note: Enron accounting? Although no one really knows what “users” spend, according
to the Office of National Drug Control Policy, “National Drug Control
Strategy: FY 2003 Budget Summary”, the federal government spent $18.822
Billion on the drug war in 2002. Of course, most of the cost of prohibition is
at the state and local level. Less than 2% of all marijuana arrests are
federal.)

Beyond
the horrific human toll of 20,000 drug-induced deaths each year, illegal
drugs cost our economy more than $280 billion annually, according to the
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.
(MarijuanaNews
note: Enron accounting? As we can see from the study
prepared by The Lewin Group cited above, roughly 60% monetary cost was actually
caused by alcohol. “According
to a study by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) and
the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA),1
in
1998, alcohol dependence and abuse cost Americans – private citizens,
corporations, local and state governments and the federal government – a total
of $184.6 billion.”

See
http://www.alkermes.com/news/economics.pdf

Moreover,
while none of “the
horrific human toll of 20,000 drug-induced deaths” resulted from marijuana
use, many resulted from the illicit use of prescription drugs and many things
other than just illicit drug use.

“The
National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) reports 14,843 drug-induced deaths
for 1996. Drug-induced deaths, a subset of drug-related deaths, are more
narrowly defined. They are identified from death certificate information
indicating the cause of death to be drug psychoses, drug dependence,
non-dependent use of drugs, accidental drug poisoning, suicide using drugs,
assault by using drugs, and other drug poisoning deaths. Drug-induced causes
exclude accidents, homicides, and other causes such as AIDS that are indirectly
related to drug use.”
From
John Walters office, See
http://www.ncjrs.org/ondcppubs/publications/policy/99ndcs/ii-b.html

“In
2001, almost 3 million youths aged 12 to 17 and almost 7 million young adults
aged 18 to 25 had used prescription-type drugs nonmedically at least once in
their lifetime..”)
See
http://www.samhsa.gov/oas/2k3/prescription/prescription.cfm )

Incredibly, there are those who choose to ignore drugs’ human devastation
and economic cost. Many of them are pseudo-sophisticate baby boomers who
consider themselves superior and hip in their wry, reckless disregard of the
facts.
(MarijuanaNews note: Incredibly, there are those who
choose to ignore the drug war’s devastation and economic cost. Many of them
are pseudo-conservatives and pseudo-liberals who talk about freedom, and
consider themselves morally superior, but
ignore the consequences of the use of state violence.)
See
The Theory and Practice of
Chaos – Analysis By Richard Cowan

They also may smoke marijuana, advocate its legalization and rationalize
cocaine as what they call a recreational drug.
(MarijuanaNews
note: This is what is called an ad
hominem
argument, “marked
by an attack on an opponent’s character rather than by an answer to the
contentions made.”

For example,
The prohibitionists may also use alcohol and tobacco, eat too much, gamble
compulsively, and rationalize the harm done to people who are arrested, by
calling it “treatment.”

Of
course, some ad
hominem
arguments are more on target than others. In the very next sentence he
acknowledges that there are people who oppose prohibition on principle.)

And there is a surprising list of libertarians and
conservatives, including William Buckley and Nobel laureate economist Milton
Friedman, who also advocate the legalization of drugs.
(MarijuanaNews
note: To name a few… How is it surprising that libertarians and conservatives
would oppose a government program that has spent billions of dollars and
increased government power enormously?)
See
Exclusive To MarijuanaNews:
Interview With William F. Buckley, Jr. By Noah Pollak and Dan Mindus

Another
Nobel laureate, Gary Becker, a professor of economics at the University of
Chicago, told me, “It would certainly save a lot of resources for society.
We could tax drug use so it could even lead to government revenue.”

He
also said, “We would be able to greatly cut the number of people in prison,
which would save resources for state and local government.”
(MarijuanaNews
note: That is as close as Dobbs gets to recognizing that people are being
arrested, much less counting the cost. For example, while he repeatedly refers
to the supposed costs of “drug use” he never calculates the cost in lost
lifetime earnings from an arrest record. Almost 750,000 Americans are arrested
on marijuana charges every year. What does that cost?)

But
the cost of drug abuse goes well beyond the expense of controlling supply and
demand. Drug users cost the country $160 billion each year in lost productivity.
(MarijuanaNews
note: Enron accounting? These numbers are dubious, at best, and not just because
they are estimates.

First, according to a 1992 NIDA report only $14
billion was lost due to “Impaired productivity” caused by the use of illicit
drug use.

Second, “productivity” is not the sole measure of life. People make many
choices in life that may hurt their “productivity.” They may decide that
they would rather be poets, and that may reduce their income.

Third, it is unclear how much of this lost “productivity” is the result of
prohibition. For example, one of the measures of lost productivity is the
frequency of job changes by users. They may change jobs more often because of
drug testing.

Finally, they may use “drugs” because they are unhappy with their job, and
marijuana users tend to be younger than the general population, and young people
change jobs more often. Correlation is not causation.)

Parental
substance abuse
is responsible for $10 billion of the $14 billion spent nationally each year on
child welfare. And drugs are involved in seven out of 10 cases of abuse and
neglect.
(MarijuanaNews note: Enron accounting? Or just old
fashioned bait and switch? Those numbers include alcohol abuse, which is by far
the largest portion. Moreover, according to the
American Academy of
Pediatrics, “Fetal
Alcohol Syndrome is the leading cause of mental retardation in newborns. As many
as 12,000 infants are born with FAS each year — more than are born with Down
syndrome, cerebral palsy, cystic fibrosis, spina bifida, and sudden infant death
syndrome (SIDS).”

Pete
Wilson, former governor of California, is a strong opponent of drug
legalization. Wilson said the problem that advocates of legalization fail to
acknowledge is that drugs are addictive and, therefore, not just another
commodity.
(MarijuanaNews
note: Alcohol and tobacco are two of the most “addictive” drugs, but they
are legal. Even caffeine is very mildly “addictive.” In that regard, it is roughly
comparable to cannabis. And by the way, Wilson vetoed two medical marijuana
bills when he was governor.)
See
Is
marijuana addictive?
and links

“Drugs
did not become viewed as bad because they are illegal,” Wilson said.
“Rather, they became illegal because they are clearly bad.”
(MarijuanaNews
note: Huh? Well, marijuana became illegal in the US as a result of Harry
Anslinger lying to Congress. In Canada, it became illegal because of a blatantly
racist book.
See
The
Racist Origins Of Canada’s Marijuana Prohibition Reported In the National
Post.

And
if being dangerous were sufficient to make a drug illegal, alcohol prohibition
would not have been repealed, tobacco would be illegal, not just
“discouraged.” The fact is that prohibition makes all drugs more
dangerous.)

Although
the war on drugs certainly has not captured the American public’s attention,
there has been success in efforts to curb drug use and supply.

According
to the University of Michigan’s Monitoring the Future Study, the percentage of
high school seniors who reported using any drug in the past month decreased to
26% in 2001 from 39% in 1978.
(MarijuanaNews
note: Enron accounting? There are many problems with this number, but it is
revealing that a reduction in monthly marijuana use – that is what virtually
all of the decline involved – would be the measure of success, ignoring the
fact that “Reported
emergency rooms mentions for both cocaine and heroin in 1997 showed no
statistically significant change from 1996, when mentions were at their
highest levels since 1978. Cocaine-related mentions remained statistically
constant from 1996 to 1997, at about 160,000. While the total number of cocaine
cases remained constant, the largest percentage of increase in cocaine mentions
during this period (1996-1997) was among those aged twelve to seventeen (41
percent, which increased from 2,581 to 3,360).”
From
John Walters, see
http://www.ncjrs.org/ondcppubs/publications/policy/99ndcs/ii-b.html

In
1978, there were fewer than 5,000 ER mentions of cocaine. In 1996, there were
over 140,000. T’was a great victory!)
For
a thorough analysis see http://www.drugwardistortions.org/distortion2.htm

Crop
report

There
are 9 million fewer drug users in America than there were in 1979. And coca
cultivation was 15% lower in Colombia in 2002, thanks to the combined efforts of
the U.S. and Colombian governments.
See
Now,
How the Narks Created Smack in Mexico. Replacing Marijuana With Poppies. The
Iron Law of Prohibition Keeps Working, But The Media Don’t

John
Walters, national drug control policy director, is optimistic about the war on
drugs. Walters told me, “We have to remember that, since we got serious in
the ’80s, overall drug use is half of what it was. And that’s progress.”

I
would say that is quite a lot of progress, but the job is only half done.

E-mail:loudobbs@
nydailynews.com

Ah, yes, John Walters.
Dobbs interviewed Mr. Enron himself on Friday.

From CNN.com

JOHN WALTERS, DIRECTOR,
OFFICE OF NATIONAL DRUG CONTROL POLICY: I think we’ve got use going down again,
after a plateau for young people’s use in the mid-’90s. We had a report that it
was maybe as much as 13 percent declined in the last year was a result of
renewed, invigorated efforts.
(MarijuanaNews note: Enron accounting? First, it is
not clear what he means. Second, there is no evidence of a dramatic decline in
the latest Monitoring
the Future surveys.)

I think, overall, we have
to remember that, since we got serious at the beginning of the ’80s, overall
drug use is half of what it was. And that’s progress. If we did that in
homelessness or with dropouts or with child abuse, it would be a victory. Now,
we’re all frustrated because it’s not smaller. But this is a result of real
effort. When we push back, it gets smaller. And when we don’t push back, it can
get bigger. So we have to stay at it.

LOU DOBBS, CNN ANCHOR: As you say, part of the frustration born of the fact that
drug use has risen in a number of areas. And 20,000 people die in drug-related
deaths every year. A third of the incarcerations in federal prisons, really more
than a third, actually, relate to drug or substance abuse. What has to be done
to win this war?

WALTERS: Well, we’ve had experience now. We know we have to be balanced. We have
to do a better job of prevention, be serious, give kids messages, supervise
them. We’re doing that in a better way.

We have to treat people. The president has made a historic commitment to add 1.6
billion to federal treatment spending. We’re spending almost over $3.5 billion
on federal treatment spending. We know we can get people into recovery. We have
to do that. But we also have to treat this as a real market phenomenon. We have
to reduce supply. And I think the other encouraging sign is we are doing that in
the largest single drug of expenditure by Americans, cocaine. With Colombia, we
now have a 15 percent reduction last year. It’s accelerated under President
Uribe, who’s actually on his first anniversary in office.
(MarijuanaNews note: Cocaine prices have not risen,
and as noted cocaine ER mentions are very high.)

We have a partner in Colombia, and with President Fox in Mexico that are make
historic changes. It’s a market phenomenon. We have to reduce both supply and
demand. Otherwise, simply making improvements on one half of that; the other
half will tend to undermine it with high demand or large supply of dangerous,
addictive substances.

DOBBS: The culture itself, there is a component of our culture, a subculture, in
which marijuana is an accepted recreational drug, as you well know. It is also
– has the impetus of being medicinally redeemable, if
you will, because in many cases it is effective.

(MarijuanaNews
note: Dobbs’ body language was revealing when he said this. He mumbled and
looked embarrassed, but Walters, who supports arresting sick and dying people
who use medical cannabis ignored his heresy.)

Is
your office, is the United States government going to focus on that particular
subculture and those conceptions and preconceptions about drug use, and attack
that directly?
(MarijuanaNews
note: Dobbs seems to be inviting an attack on marijuana users, and Walters is
more than willing to oblige.)

WALTERS:
Biggest single area of ignorance is marijuana. No question about it. Today of
the six million-plus people we have to treat, 60 percent are dependent on
marijuana, treated for dependency on illegal drugs. More teenagers coming into
treatment nationwide for marijuana dependency than for all other illegal drugs
combined.
(MarijuanaNews
note: Enron was perfect compared with these numbers. First, “teenagers coming
into treatment nationwide for marijuana dependency than for all other illegal
drugs combined,” because they are being sent there by the courts.

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Agency’s own web site says,
“By 1999, more than half of all adolescent marijuana admissions were referred
through the criminal justice system. Adolescent marijuana admissions through the
criminal justice system increased at a higher rate than admissions through other
sources.” From http://www.samhsa.gov/oas/2k2/YouthMJtx/YouthMJtx.cfm

SAMHSA
also explains, “Persons who received specialty treatment in the past year but
did not meet the criteria for dependence or abuse were included in the
definition of treatment need because it was assumed that if a person received
treatment, he or she probably needed it at some point in the past year.
From http://www.samhsa.gov/oas/Dependence/appendixc.htm

In
other words, if you were sent to “treatment” by the courts or school or by
anyone else without a diagnosis of “dependence or abuse”, you must need
treatment even though you don’t otherwise “meet the criteria for dependence
or abuse.”
Second, very few teens use any illicit drug other than cannabis, so they are not
likely to need treatment for anything else.)
Also see
Walters
Tells a New Lie. Oh Happy Day! People Need Treatment If They Are Sent to
Treatment, By Definition. And How Do They Treat “Marijuana Addicts?” We
Couldn’t Make This Up, But They Did.

Baby boomers and the generation after them all have a great deal of ignorance
about that problem. They
think marijuana’s not an addictive substance, it’s not a serious threat. It’s
more than twice as important as a cause of dependency than the next most
important illegal drug, which is cocaine. But most people think of heroin,
cocaine, methamphetamine, those are dangerous substances. Marijuana’s the soft
drug. In fact, we ought to legalize it, as you say.
(MarijuanaNews
note: Dobbs lets this man tell American teenagers that the dangers of “heroin,
cocaine, methamphetamine” are comparable to the dangers of cannabis. That is
shameful and dangerous! Huge numbers of people are dependent on caffeine, but
that does not mean that caffeine is a public health problem.)
See
Marijuana
Bigger Problem Than Meth? DEAland And The Bush Administration Have a Very
Serious Walters Problem. We Couldn’t Make This Up!

The fact
of the matter is, marijuana is the most dangerous threat across a broader scale,
and part of that is because of the ignorance about marijuana and the fact that
people don’t realize that today’s marijuana is not 1 percent THC, the
psychoactive ingredient of the ’80s, it’s 9 to 14 percent, and we now have
high-potency varieties of 20 to 30 percent, increasing its danger coming from
Canada and other places.
(MarijuanaNews
note: Enron personified. According to the US government’s own data, the
average THC level in 1983 was 3.34%. Ten years later, in 1993, the average was
virtually the same. In 2002, according to the University of Mississippi’s
Potency Monitoring Project, the non-normalized average potency of cannabis
seizures had risen to 6.19%. Canada supplies only a tiny part of the US market.)
See
Dan
Gardner of The Ottawa Citizen Continues Iconoclastic Practice of Questioning
Government Statements And Checking Facts. Someday These Techniques May Even Be
Taught In Journalism Schools.

DOBBS: Mr. Walters, as
you know, there are in this country a group of people, I
would style them as presenting themselves as pseudosophisticates, who are
wry in their dismissal and derision of the “just say no” to drugs
slogan that came out of the middle ’80s, Nancy Reagan. We don’t have anything
like that, but the fact is that campaign really worked, didn’t it?
(MarijuanaNews note: Enron again. Dobbs himself cited
1979 as the peak year for reported “drug use”, but Nancy Reagan’s “Just
say no” campaign did not even start until three years later. While such a
slogan may be appropriate for really young children, it is not likely to have
any impact on those most at risk. For example, “drug
related deaths” rose from 7,101 in
1979 to 16,926 in 1996.)

WALTERS:
It did work. And we like to base our policies on facts
and on results.
See
Walters
Puts The Media to the Test By Taking Hyper-Lying to A New Level. Blood Libels To
Justify Police State. San Diego Medical Activist Faces Federal Charges for 20
Plants.

And during the ’80s, we started at the beginning of the
’80s with the largest drug problem in the history of the United States, twice as
high in the number of users as we have today, and it declined steadily, reaching
a low point in ‘92 and rebounding a bit during the mid-’90s and plateauing. That
campaign, which simply said directly at the culture that said it’s OK to use
it’s not OK to use, and it’s your responsibility first and foremost to not use.

DOBBS: Is this White House, Mr. Walters, sufficiently out in front on this
forgotten war? Are you sufficiently in the public eye on this important,
critically important issue?

WALTERS: We have a national media campaign where we spend over $150 million with
messages that we’ve used the experience of the past 20 to 25 years to craft, and
I think if you look at the preliminary results we’ve gotten from the changes
we’ve made to improve that, a 13 percent decline in teen drug use in the last
year is unprecedented.

Yeah, in the context of the war on terror and other things, it’s hard to get the
same kind of prominence there was at certain points in the ’80s, but the
president has made clear in putting his political credibility on the line,
saying we want a reduction in two years of 10 percent, and five years of 25
percent drug use. That’s putting his credibility and accountability on the line.
See
They’ve Lied to Us About
Marijuana, So How Do We Know That They Aren’t Lying About Iraq? Credibility in
Time of War.
and
Is the War On Drugs A
“Just War”? Should It Be Easier To Justify Violence Against A Foreign
Dictatorship Than Against Peaceful Citizens Of One’s Own Country?

He’s led the effort on treatment. He’s led the effort in working with Mexico and
Colombia on this, and we’re seeing results on both supply and demand that are
historic.

DOBBS: John Walters, thank you very much for being with us.

(MarijuanaNews
note: On Friday, after a week of prohibitionist propaganda,
Dobbs had a poll
on his web site, “Do
you believe marijuana should be decriminalized, yes or no?”

Over
91% said, Yes!

Of
course, this was not a “scientific poll.” Surveys show that only 70% of
Americans favor “decriminalization.”
See
Science,
Democracy, Ideology and the Prohibitionist Police State. Marijuana Use Doesn’t
Hurt “Thinking Skills” But Prohibition Does. Analysis by Richard Cowan

However, the viewers of Dobbs’
program who have Internet access tend to be above average in income and
education, the groups that are most likely to oppose prohibition. Having
insulted the intelligence and character of 91% of his viewers, Dobbs might want
to reconsider whether he really wants to continue talking to such a group of “pseudosophisticates.”

Or they may decide that if he lies to them about marijuana, he may be lying
about other things as well.)