What's Next for Drug Law Reform?

Richard Byrne, looks at the drug-law reform movement following the failure of several statewide anti-drug war initiatives in the last election.

He attributes the electoral defeats largely to "the seemingly irresistible force that the highly popular war on terrorism exerts on other issues." Drug Czar John Walters' ads linking drugs with terrorism and his campaign appearances in Arizona, Nevada, and Ohio also come under fire. (Jacob Sullum and Brian Doherty have more on this.)

Byrne rightly points out that Republicans aren't the only obstacles to reform: "Democrats did little to liberalize drug laws over the past decade when they had control of one or both houses of the US Congress."