Matt Yglesias noted earlier that not only did Steve Jobs admit to using LSD, he actually was quite effusive about it even in his interviews with the Pentagon for a security clearance, saying it was “a positive life-changing experience.”
This isn’t a novel observation, but regardless of what you think of drugs generally or LSD specifically it should be very disturbing that wealthy, high-status people can get away with this sort of thing scot-free. There are lots of superficially funny stories about a young Obama smoking pot with his friends, while in New York City more than fifty thousand people were arrested in 2011 for marijuana possession alone. (Governor Cuomo, to his credit, is seeking to change that.)
When this sort of unpunished lawbreaking is common among the ruling class, it’s indicative of a loss of accountability, and people shouldn’t take it lying down. Someone should be asking Obama if he’d been better off arrested, or if the country would have been better off if Steve Jobs had been arrested or jailed for his LSD use.
