New: The War on Pot Is Over!
2013 is going to be remembered as the year the drug war died as a political issue, writes Nick Gillespie.
The headline of the latest Gallup Poll on the subject says it all: "For First Time, Americans Favor Legalizing Marijuana." Fully 58 percent of respondents agreed that "the use of marijuana should be made legal." Not decriminalized, medicalized, or any other weasel-worded synonym to keep the squares and the cops and the addiction-industry lobbyists from getting the vapors and reaching for a legal chill pill. Legalized. This year's figure represents a massive, 10-point bounce from last year and an even longer, stranger trip from 1969, the first year Gallup popped the question, when just 12 percent said pot ought to be sold like beer, wine, and alcohol…. A large majority of Americans favor legalizing it and that's not going to change. No politician is going to ever again gain votes or win an election by talking tough about pot.