The Ashley Biden Cocaine Scandal

Is the Obama White House Dazed and Confused?

We've got a couple of stories in the news this morning that will further clarify the battle lines in the culture wars. On the one hand, The Politico's story this morning reports that the marijuana issue is "suddenly smoking hot." The article, by Professor Jeremy Mayer, suggests that criminalization is archaic:

Smoking pot doesn’t cause schizophrenia, but marijuana as an issue sure gives our political system the symptoms. We have just elected our third president in a row who at least tried marijuana in early adulthood, yet it remains illegal.

Beyond imprisonment, one of my policy students, who was honest As we discovered again this week, President Obama, like his two predecessors, supports imprisoning people for making the same choices he made.

Beyond imprisonment, one of my policy students, who was honest on a security clearance about her one time use of pot, could lose her job for doing what Clinton, Bush and Obama did.

On television, leading comedian Jon Stewart and America’s sweetheart, Sandra Bullock, swap pot smoking stories with lighthearted abandon, laughing along with their audience, who, like most Americans, end up voting for politicians who support draconian punishments for pot users and dealers.

Year after year, major Hollywood films like Pineapple Express show potsmoking in a positive light, yet legalization remains unmentionable to both our political parties. And America’s most popular Olympian, Michael Phelps, like the majority of people his age, has tried pot, but loses millions in sponsorship when it is revealed that he has done what most of his fans have done.

Several states have legalized medical marijuana, and a few are contemplating decriminalization, and yet, other states are about to prevent those whose urine tests positive for marijuana from receiving desperately needed benefits to which they would otherwise be legally entitled.

At least eight states, including Kansas, Oklahoma, and West Virginia, are actively considering making drug tests mandatory for food stamps, welfare, or unemployment. In a classic demonstration of how America has always had one drug law for the rich and one for the poor, no one has suggested drug testing recipients of billions in bailout cash. We could probably save a lot of money by testing Wall Street financiers for pot (or cocaine, for that matter).

Perhaps these accumulated paradoxes have finally become large enough for the nation to begin reconsidering its position on pot. For an issue that has been in stasis for decades, marijuana is suddenly hot, one might even say, smoking.

The second story is the report that Ashley Biden, daughter of Vice President Joseph Biden, has allegedly been videotaped snorting cocaine at a party in Wilmington, Delaware. The New York Post offers a scandalous lede:

A "friend" of Vice President Joseph Biden's daughter, Ashley, is attempting to hawk a videotape that he claims shows her snorting cocaine at a house party this month in Delaware.

Radar Online has more:

The tape has been viewed by a RadarOnline.com freelance reporter who confirms the woman looks identical to Ashley Biden.

Tom Dunlap, an attorney for Dunlap, Grubb and Weaver in Washington D.C. is representing the seller of the tape in brokering a deal and several news organizations have seen the footage.

In addition to RadarOnline.com, representatives for the New York Post, a large British newspaper and the National Enquirer have all viewed the tape.

News clips show that Ashley Biden was once arrested for marijuana possession while she was a college student in New Orleans in 1999. The charges were later dismissed.

In 2002, The Los Angeles Times reported that Ashley, then 21, was arrested on a misdemeanor charge of obstructing a police officer outside a Chicago bar.

Ashley Biden is now a social worker for a public child-welfare agency in Delaware. In that position, she must see dysfunctional families whose lives are torn apart by poverty, joblessness, domestic violence, welfare dependency, and alcohol and drug abuse.

None of the stories online have posted the video, and some are completely dismissing the rumors. But let's assume that the allegations are true, and that Ashley Biden is a pot-smoking cokehead. This is a woman who has been arrested for both marijuana possession and for some kind of scuffling with police officers at a Chicago bar. Ms. Biden's pattern of prior events alone suggests something of a freewheeling spirit, and in my opinion the allegations of her cocaine use are realistically plausible.

So first of all, where's all the outrage on the left?

Andrew Sullivan, after the Michael Phelps drug scandal came to light, asked "does anyone think that smoking pot would give him an unfair advantage in the pool? Please. When on earth are we going to grow up as a culture?" But recall that Sullivan led the attack on Sarah Palin's family as well, and he wrote recently that "I regret nothing about my blogging about Sarah Palin last year and would do it again ..." I'd bet most families would be nearly as upset with their child's marijuana and cocaine abuse as they would with unmarried pregnancies. Does Sullivan have anything to say about the vice-presidential drug scandal? If Bristol Palin cocaine tapes were being shopped around, the bareback blogger would be going ape-crazy over the story. Who needs to grow up?

And how about the mainstream media? Obama's marijuana smoking is a big story at The Politico, and decriminalization is the rage, so where's the coverage of Ashley Biden and the Biden family's apparenet social problems? Can you say double standard?

I grew up in the hothouse high school days of the Dazed and Confused 1970s. I am a parent of young children and I oppose the decriminalization of marijuana because I think the drug is a life-waster. I take seriously the clinical the medical science that finds marijuana use to be a gateway to the abuse of illicit hard drugs and alcohol dependence, and even if some research shows a reduced likelihood of progression from marijuana to hard drugs in recent decades, there is simply no reasonable circumstance that society should see the collapse of the NORMATIVE and legal prohibitions on the use of these substances.

That is to say, we should expect to see just as much media attention and concomitant public concern had Ashley Biden been videotaped allegedly smoking a big fat reefer rather than doing lines. Both marijuana smoking and cocaine use are embedded in the deeper social pathology of self-destructiness and the collapse of moral values. Let's see the big liberal blogs and the mainstream press stand up for some values here, if not journalistic consistency.

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UPDATE: The Times of London is going with the story, "US Vice-President Joe Biden's daughter Ashley filmed snorting lines of cocaine."