Drug warrior claims weed killed 37, but you and I can be just as blind

By David McElroy · February 28, 2014

When the Maryland state Senate was considering a proposal to legalize medical marijuana, Annapolis Police Chief Michael Pristoop had the perfect rebuttal to this “outrageous” idea.

Pristoop testified to a Senate committee that marijuana is so harmful that 37 people died in Colorado on the first day of legalization there.

Many of us were immediately laughing at Pristoop, because we recognized the story of the 37 dead people as satire making fun of the crazy claims and fears of the drug warriors. Only an idiot could be blind enough to fall for that, right?

Although I laughed at Pristoop, too, I quickly started thinking about something else. What happened to Pristoop happens to all of us at times. We might not embarrass ourselves as publicly as Pristoop did. We might not fall for such obvious satire as he did. We might even be a lot smarter than he is.

But I’ve noticed that we all have our own blind spots. We all have assumptions we’ve made that we can’t even consciously identify. We all have beliefs that are so deeply held that we don’t question them. And as a result, we can all be fooled by anecdotes that support what we’re already inclined to believe.

Pristoop has spent his career as a cop in the context of the “war on drugs,” so he’s inclined to believe that recreational drugs are evil and dangerous. So every story of someone abusing drugs and paying a price resonates with him. He believes those stories — whether they’re true or not — because they reinforce something he’s already certain about.

He’s completely sure that Colorado made a horrible mistake legalizing drugs. Since much of the focus of police work ever since he’s been a cop has been arresting people who use and sell those drugs, he has to maintain his belief or else admit that he’s spent much of his career doing something pretty evil. No normal person wants to believe that. It’s easier to simply stick to what he’s been taught.

So when the Daily Currant published a story saying that 37 people were dead on the first day of Colorado legalization, it was easy for him — and maybe millions of others — to believe. Pristoop and people like him have no idea that their gullibility on the issue is proof of the concept that made the story funny in the first place.

I presume Pristoop has never heard of the Daily Currant and had no idea that it’s a satirical site. But I’ve seen plenty of people on Facebook fooled into believing satire from the Daily Currant and even from the Onion, too. People believe what they want to believe and what they’re already inclined to believe.

And this brings me back to you and me.

As easy as it is to laugh at Pristoop, this is a perfect example of why it’s so difficult for us to ever all come to agreement about issues. We might be able to debate some of the basics of issues, but we all have such deep underlying beliefs that inform our positions that it’s impossible to adequately uncover all of those beliefs and assumptions and rationally examine them. (And that’s even if we assume that every one of us is completely rational and completely willing to re-examine what we believe — and that’s clearly not true.)

I like to believe that I’m open to new ideas and open to the fact that I can be wrong. I pride myself on it, in fact. Maybe I’m a bit too prideful about it. I’m not sure. I know I’m more open than most. I know that I’ve changed my views over the course of my life far more than most people have. I know I’m far more willing to look at others’ beliefs and try to understand ways we can both get what we want.

And yet, even with that, I know there are times when I hear stories — some that turn out to be true and some that turn out to be false rumors — and latch onto those stories briefly as evidence to “prove” what I already believe. And I constantly have to stop myself and remember that anecdotes don’t really prove anything.

We tend to believe — without consciously saying this — that anecdotes that prove my beliefs are just obvious consequences of the truth. We also tend to believe that anecdotes that support “their” beliefs are either aberrations or maybe they’re made up by people on “the other side” to prove something that can’t possibly be true.

We all want to believe that we’re the exceptions. We all want to believe that we’re the one fair, honest and rational person. We all want to believe that those on the other side have ulterior motives or they’re not as bright as we are or that they just haven’t yet come around t0 understanding our brilliant conclusions.

But we’re not exceptions. Some of us are much better at self-examination than others, but we’re all human and we’re all prone to our own blind spots.

Pristoop has a major blind spot when it comes to marijuana. He honestly thinks that if more people start using it, they’re going to be dropping like flies. He was ready to latch onto anything to prove his point.

Even now that he’s been forced to apologize, he can’t bring himself to directly say that he was fooled by satire.

“I apologize for the information I provided concerning the deaths,” Pristoop said in a prepared statement. “I believed the information I obtained was accurate but I now know the story is nothing more than an urban legend.”

An “urban legend”? He can’t admit he was fooled by satire because that might imply that the satire was right.

His humiliating experience hasn’t taught Pristoop anything. He’s still a hardcore drug warrior who’s determined to stop evil weed.

“This does not take away from the other facts presented in opposition to legalization,” his statement added.

In other words, Pristoop didn’t learn anything. He’s still just as blind to the irrationality of his position.

But you and I don’t need to laugh at Pristoop too much. We’re very much like him at times. And this is why we’re never all going to agree about much of anything.

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I have changed radically about some things over the years, but probably none of those changes have been as great as the ways that I feel about people who are viewed as evil or criminal. When I was young, I was eager to see criminals or foreign political enemies killed. Today, I don’t view such people though rose-colored glasses and I don’t view them as blameless folks who are going to turn their lives around if we just think happy thoughts. But I can’t celebrate the death of anybody, even if he might deserve it in some ways of thinking about it. Even if it’s sometimes necessary to kill someone — and those cases are often debatable — I regret the death of someone who will now never have a chance to discover love and change his life. There are some evil people in this world, but I can’t celebrate their deaths.

There was a time when I was idealistic enough to believe that if a writer expressed his thoughts clearly and simply enough, any bright and honest person would understand his point. I know better now. We all bring so many unconscious assumptions to the things we read that we often see what we expect to see instead of what the writer intended. This is incredibly frustrating to me as a writer, but I’m trying more and more to just say what I need to say — as clearly as I know how — and then ignore the inevitable responses which show that others perceived something which was not intended. I have to write for those who “get” where I’m coming from, not for those who see my words through personal filters that change my meaning. I hope my intentions are clear to you and I hope what I write can be useful to you, but if not, maybe my work just isn’t right for you. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

I found out this evening that someone I casually knew killed himself last Wednesday. I didn’t know him well — and I never found him personable — but he had started work a couple of months ago at a restaurant where I go. He was a 26-year-old who struck me as a confused and unhappy person, but I didn’t think much about it since he stayed to himself and resisted my efforts to chat with him. It turns out that he had a history of depression and had a lot of gender confusion. He seemed very androgynous to me and I learned today that he presented himself as female in some situations. He was rejected by a romantic interest last week, so he went to the woods and killed himself. His body wasn’t found for three days. It’s tragic how miserable people around us can be and how we so rarely know the truth about things they struggle with.

I’ve been with people for most of this day, but I feel lonely tonight. I’ve had things on my mind for the last few days that I feel the strong need to talk about. I need someone to share my thoughts with — someone who’s interested in ideas and how they affect us. Someone who gets excited to discover new things and can find joy in seeing new ways those things might change our lives. I feel lonely tonight because I painfully remember what it feels like to have that — and I’m craving that sort of connection. I miss having someone I can call and say, “I’ve been reading something and it’s sparked some thoughts I want to share with you.” Those sorts of conversations have lasted for hours for me in the past — or for thousands of words if it’s an exchange of mail — and it feels wrong that there is nobody who wants to hear such things from me tonight. I used to think being lonely was about being alone, but I understand now it’s a longing for one particular person. The loneliest place to be when you need one person is in a crowd composed of people who cannot be who you need.

I don’t agree with everything the late Neil Postman wrote, but I would argue that no other recent scholar gives coherent structure to the last few hundred years in the way his books do. I’m currently re-reading his book, “Technopoly,” and I’m comforted to have a scholar give structure and definitions to things which I’ve observed and barely understood. I was enough of a technophile when I first read this book that I bristled at much of what it said. I didn’t want him to be right and it was easier to dismiss him as a Luddite. But as I see technology continue to enable an information glut which is changing society for the worse, I find comfort in his explanations for how we got here. I don’t yet know the solutions, but I finally understand the problems more clearly. I suspect that much of what we need to make life more meaningful can be found in things we accidentally threw away in the past to make room for technologies. I strongly urge you to read the book and think about its implications.

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