Nick Gillespie on CNN's Erin Burnett Outfront, Talking Life Sentence for Hash Brownies

I'm scheduled to appear on CNN's Erin Burnett Outfront tonight, talking about the idiotic case of a Texas teenager who faces a life sentence over a pound of hash brownies.

The show starts at 7 P.M. Eastern Time and I'm scheduled to hit around 7.30.

Yesterday, Jacob Sullum provided a grim primer on how idiotic drug laws get super-idiotic when it comes to cannabis concentrates. The short version? If you reduce pot or hash into a liquid form, resin, or oil you've gone from carrying weed to carrying a controlled substance. If you mix that substance with anything—brownie mix, say—and it weighs over 400 grams and you get convicted of having "manufactured, delivered or possessed with the intent to deliver," you're staring down the barrel of a 10 years to 99 years to life prison sentence.

Good luck, Jacob Lavoro.

I firmly believe this is the sort of case where the drug war goes to die. As medical marijuana spreads to half of the states and recreational pot proceeds apace in Colorado and Washington with no serious problems so far, even the most reactionary jury in America will be asking what John Kerry asked about the Vietnam War: How do you ask someone to be the last man to die for a mistake?

Back in January, I debated Patrick Kennedy about marijuana legalization. Take a watch here: