A Good Column About Legal Marijuana in Michigan Is (Still) Waiting to be Written

Like reefer madness, the badness of Mitch Albom columns appears to be contagious. 

After Albom filed a standard get-off-my-lawn piece in the Freep, objecting to the state's low tax on newly legalized recreational marijuana, Larry Gabriel peers out from his spot at the Metro Times to respond. 

Only his isn't much better. 

(Albom's column) was on the front of the editorial section above the fold — a prominent placement for the piece, given the fact that the Freep had also urged voters to vote yes on Prop. 1 to legalize marijuana in Michigan. Before the election there was no discussion from Albom or Kathleen Gray, the Freep beat reporter on marijuana legalization, or from anyone else at the newspaper that the marijuana taxes were set too low. There was some debate about how much tax money overall would be raised, but no significant discussion that the rates are too low.

Gabriel is a columnist himself, and should know, first, that Albom's column is always in that spot; and further, that columnists don't march in lockstep with the rest of the editorial board. Columnists speak for themselves; presumably they're hired by editors who know where they stand on big issues, but if Brian Dickerson woke up tomorrow and decided deploying troops to the border was fine 'n' dandy, he could almost certainly get that viewpoint in the paper. The point: Editors give columnists a lot of leeway. 

Then Gabriel goes through the whole tiresome thing and bravely refutes Albom's lazy assertions, which is kind of like going to a prison cafeteria to critique the food, only the cooks at the prison cafeteria generally put more effort into their dishes than Albom does -- at least his Sunday Freep column, which has been phoned-in for years now. 

We long ago made a vow not to put more work into slagging Albom than he puts into his own work, and having worked on this item for eight minutes now, it appears we are out of ti...