A new book about marijuana has generated a blizzard of breathless media coverage.Alex Berenson’s “Tell Your Children: The Truth about Marijuana, Mental Health and Violence” argues that cannabis is causing an increase in violent crime. The book links recreational marijuana to rising murder rates. The backlash has been swift. The book was published on January 8. Already, many social scientists and psychologists have spoken out about the logical errors in Berenson’s argument. Some of the scientists who Berenson cited have come forward, saying the author misrepresented their work. Most of Berenson’s critics point out that he made the classic mistake made by idiots everywhere: He equated correlation with causation. Just because two things happen at the same time — as scientists have patiently explained, since the beginning of science — that doesn’t necessarily mean one thing caused the other. Murder rates have risen in Washington state since legalization, the book says, so recreational marijuana must be driving people to murder each other. You know what else rises when murder rates increase? Ice cream sales. Data has consistently shown homicide rates increase when ice cream sales increase. Does this mean ice cream causes people to kill each other? Yes, if you follow Alex Berenson’s logic. But in the media blitz around his book’s publication, some people are parroting his claims, without examining them. Like best-selling author Malcolm Gladwell. He reviewed Berenson’s book in pages of the New Yorker, in a piece titled “Unwatched Pot: Is marijuana as safe as we think?” Gladwell’s concern was based primarily on Berenson’s argument. He didn’t question any of Berenson’s claims, or his research, or his data. Consequently, Gladwell got some things wrong. “An earlier version of this piece misstated the percentages of increase for murders and aggravated assaults in the state of Washington,” reads a footnote to the online version of Gladwell’s article. Washington’s crime statistics were a central point to the argument, both in Berenson’s book and Gladwell’s New Yorker piece. But even if the numbers had been accurate the first time around, the logic is flawed. Actually, even the most basic sentence in the paragraph is incorrect. Gladwell writes: “Berenson looks, too, at the early results from the state of Washington, which, in 2014, became the first U.S. jurisdiction to legalize recreational marijuana. Between 2013 and 2017, the state’s aggravated-assault rate rose seventeen per cent, which was nearly twice the increase seen nationwide, and the murder rate rose forty-four per cent, which was more than twice the increase nationwide. We don’t know that an increase in cannabis use was responsible for that surge in violence. Berenson, though, finds it strange that, at a time when Washington may have exposed its population to higher levels of what is widely assumed to be a calming substance, its citizens began turning on one another with increased aggression.” Sounds scary. But there’s a laundry list of things wrong with this paragraph. First of all, Washington, in 2014, didn’t become the first jurisdiction to legalize marijuana. Colorado and Washington both voted to legalize recreational pot in 2012, but Colorado was the first — on January 1, 2014 — to open recreational marijuana stores. Washington’s first retail stores didn’t open their doors til July 8, 2014. (So Colorado was totally first.) That’s not the only error Gladwell made here. Experts point out a selective use of data. Washington’s violent crime rates actually dropped the year before that, so rates were leveling back out. (Plus, Washington’s violent crime rates are low, compared to the rest of the country.) Plus, did Washington really “expose” its citizens to pot in 2014? People in Washington were already growing and smoking pot, long before its recreational use was legal. And even if people were “exposed” to pot, that didn’t make them “turn on one another.” The most reliable indicator of rising murder rates is actually rising income inequality, according to most data experts. The greater the social and economic inequality in the streets, the more likely people will become violent. And during these years, economic inequality was increasing. Isn’t that a more likely cause? (Or maybe Washington residents were just eating too much ice cream again.) But it’s not that simple. Violence is never caused by one factor alone. But if you read this review of Berenson’s book, you might think it’s caused by cannabis. Because that is what Berenson set out to do. This book is, by his own admission, unbalanced. He set out to prove a point. He started digging, he says, after his wife, a psychiatrist, mentioned a case of a murderer who’d been a lifelong cannabis consumer. Despite diving into the evidence, he only presents data points that align with his thesis. He includes zero positive data about cannabis. He neglects even data that would be useful to a discussion of violence, like, say, statistics showing how cannabis users have lower rates of domestic violence. Or the studies showing violent crime decreasing after legalization in states on the US border. None of that is included. The book opens with a scene about a woman in Cairns, Australia, who stabbed eight children to death in 2014. She had also smoked pot since the ninth grade. This is gruesome. But gruesome can translate into book sales. Berenson previously left journalism to write thriller novels. He knows how to write graphic scenes. Is this book just one big book sales strategy? Controversial views generate buzz (the kind of buzz Berenson is okay with.) “Is Alex Berenson Trolling Us With His Anti-Weed Book?” asks the Rolling Stone. The book is designed to scare people about marijuana, by linking it to terrifying tales of schizophrenia and violence. This is not exactly new. The book has already been called “Reefer Madness 2.0.” But Reefer Madness has already been debunked — and so has this book. Since the book’s release, experts have analyzed the data points, and reached different conclusions. The data in the book was manipulated to make an old argument: that marijuana makes people commit heinous crimes. But why even make this argument? And why are we writing “arguments” about an issue that affects billions of people? Shouldn’t we just try to write something true? “Science and medicine are rarely well served by writing in argument form,” writes one medical doctor who reviewed the book for the Atlantic. “An argument’s job is to undermine, downplay, or ignore contradicting evidence. Gladwell and Berenson offer no stories of anyone who has a positive relationship to the drug.” This is the problem with making a one-sided argument. You don’t necessarily get to the truth, in all its complexity.But you can definitely make it sound scary. And fear-mongering can generate profits. (Just ask Fox News.) But it’s dangerous for a profit-driven novelist to have an unquestioning cheerleader at the New Yorker, which is arguably the country’s most trusted intellectual platform. Gladwell concluded his New Yorker piece with echoes of Berenson’s ominous words. In novelistic prose, he foreshadows the darkness that lies ahead. He lists the scary offerings from a recreational dispensary’s menu, including Belgian dark chocolate. All the offerings, he explains, are “laced with large amounts of a drug, THC, that no one knows much about.” Laced? If you made a rosemary chicken noodle soup, would you say the soup is “laced” with rosemary? The THC is an ingredient. It's clearly labeled. Also: Just because Malcolm Gladwell doesn’t know much about THC, that doesn’t mean no one does. THC is a compound that has been produced by a plant and used by humans since the dawn of civilization. (Gladwell does not address the racism involved in our nation’s drug policies, or the costs of enforcement.) Still, an uninformed reader could get freaked out by Gladwell’s and Berenson’s premise. They might buy the book.And that might be the whole point. But it’s important for cannabis advocates, in refuting this book, to avoid resorting to one-sided arguments, either. Because it’s true that marijuana can—among some users, on some days — induce anxiety. And depending on your genetic predisposition to psychiatric illness, and your personal history of trauma, it's not impossible that THC could trigger a schizophrenic episode. Maybe there are some people who just shouldn’t smoke pot. And maybe Alex Berenson is one of them. Because reviving a debunked argument that destroyed millions of lives, just so you can make a buck — that's the sort of thing that, if you got stoned, it could hit you like a brick. Maybe it could even drive you mad.