Posts Pan Pot Prohibition

The Drug War Chronicle notes that both the Denver Post and Canada's National Post this week editorialized against marijuana prohibition.

The Canadian paper's editorial was prompted by the disparate treatment of two marijuana offenders: an activist who got 90 days in Saskatchewan for passing a joint at a rally and a publicity-seeking Vancouver cafe owner who literally could not get arrested despite selling pot openly for months at her Amsterdam-style coffeehouse. "When our drug laws are enforced so arbitrarily that one individual is imprisoned for trafficking when he did nothing of the sort, even as another feels compelled to contact the media in order to draw attention to the fact that her establishment has sold the same drug over the counter for months without any consequences," the editorial said, "the need for reform is obvious."

The Denver Post went further, calling not just for marijuana legalization but for a wide-ranging rethinking of the war on drugs (even while buying into a few anti-drug myths). The paper was especially impressed that "thoughtful conservatives such as William F. Buckley are joining the call for sweeping reforms." The thing is, Buckley has been questioning the marijuana laws, and the war on drugs generally, for many years, and so has the magazine he founded. Perhaps he should be welcoming aboard the "thoughtful liberals" at the Denver Post.