Tony Bennett Wants to Legalize Drugs to Prevent Celebrity Deaths or Something
In the wake of Whitney Houston’s flame out, Tony Bennett found a microphone and urged a crowd of people to push for the legalization of all street drugs because he couldn’t handle another Amy Winehouse death, or Michael Jackson death or Whitney Houston death.
What Tony actually said was:
“First it was Michael Jackson, then Amy Winehouse, now the magnificent Whitney Houston. Let’s legalize drugs, like Amsterdam, it’s a very sane city now. I’d like to have every gentleman and lady in this room commit themselves to get our government to legalize drugs, so they have to get it from a doctor, not just some gangsters that just sell it under the table.”
Aren’t lounge singers cute when they try to pretend to be smart? Michael Jackson was put down by a doctor, Whitney OD’ed on booze and pills and Winehouse had alcohol poisoning. None of them were smoking crack or shooting heroin. The drugs they took were all legal and doctor prescribed.
Rob Taylor wrote an excellent piece on this for Red State. He said:
Tony Bennett illustrates the true drug problem in America which is our lack of real education about drug abuse. None of the deaths he complains about would have been stopped by legalizing illegal drugs. People don’t abuse drugs because the drugs are illegal, they abuse drugs because they are addicts or troubled or in some cases because they’ve been told by groups like NORML that drug abuse is consequence-less.
This message of consequence-free drug use–the mythical “victimless crime”–has seeped into every part of our culture. We have doctors prescribing highly addictive drugs like Xanax to children and wonder why death by drug overdose is on the rise.
It’s time to reengage the drug war as not just a legal issue, but an educational, cultural, and moral issue for which conservatism is the answer. The Tony Bennetts of the world cannot be allowed to spread these Cheech and Chongisms to another vulnerable generation.
Its no real surprise that Tony Bennett is talking out of his ass. A week after 9-11 he told Howard Stern that America deserved to be attacked and that we were terrorists too.
