Not long ago, representatives of the Libertarian Party came to campus equipped with a stack of fliers, a fold-up table and a heap of Mary Jane pins. What they didn’t come with was a sound argument for legalizing weed.

During my conversation with a party representative, I asked him why he thought marijuana should be legal.

This was his argument: Alcohol is more dangerous than marijuana, so if we want to be consistent with our stance on alcohol, we should legalize weed. It is an argument that has been given in The New York Times, and it can be found all over the Internet.

It is conceivable that there are good arguments for legalizing weed, but this isn’t one of them.

The problem with his argument is its sole reliance upon statistics. To prove that alcohol is worse than marijuana, the representative pointed to the number of deaths correlated with alcohol compared to the number correlated with marijuana.

Statistical correlations like these can’t tell us whether alcohol is worse because they leave out morally relevant details like whether alcohol is the root cause of the bad consequences or whether alcohol is necessarily bad in itself.

Alcohol, like nearly everything, can be used either in a dangerous or a safe way. As I see it, a lot of bad things happen around alcohol because a lot of people make the choice to use alcohol in an irresponsible way. There’s nothing essentially harmful about alcohol.

This is how policy makers should actually go about evaluating statistics. Suppose it became a trend among American youth, who often drive cheap cars, to drag race in residential neighborhoods. There would be a high correlation between cheap cars and automobile-related accidents. Policy makers may look at this statistical correlation and wonder whether cheap cars should be prohibited. First, however, they should consider the root cause of the deaths. Are cheap cars really to blame?

Upon reflection, policy makers will likely conclude that cheap cars aren’t to blame – people’s dumb decisions are. Cheap cars aren’t dangerous in themselves. But like other benign objects – hammers or pillows – cheap cars can be misused in a dangerous way. The fact that cheap cars can be used in a legitimate way, however, justifies the legalization of their use.

The same sort of analysis should apply to any comparison between alcohol and marijuana. We can’t just ask whether one substance “harms” more people. We need to ask why each substance harms people. Are people to blame for the harm that the substance does, or is the substance intrinsically harmful?

If the Libertarian Party wants the government to legalize weed, it should show how weed can be used in a safe and legitimate way. It’s irrelevant how weed compares to the dangerous and illegitimate ways of misusing alcohol. It’s hardly a good case for weed to point out that being stoned is safer than being drunk.

Elliot Polsky can be reached at pols4319@stthomas.edu.