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Last week, Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) proposed a nasty amendment to deny housing aid in New Orleans to entire households that included people convicted of certain drug offenses or other crimes. These folks paid their debt to society and got crushed by a hurricane, only to have David Vitter (who's not exactly perfect himself) come along and try to put their whole family on the street.

The whole thing is too sickening for words, fortunately I don't have to craft many, because the U.S. Senate voted it down decisively.

Meanwhile, that same day, reformers scored a huge victory in the House of Representatives, which passed legislation significantly limiting drug warrior Mark Souder's vicious "Aid Elimination Penalty" that blocks education for students reporting drug convictions.

These may seem like no-brainer issues that anyone with a fraction of a conscience would easily comprehend, but it hasn't always been that simple. One rarely finds the U.S. Congress making two smart drug policy decisions on the same day. It would be crazy to think that bad drug war legislation is a thing of the past, but I do think it's safe to say we're moving slowly but surely into a new political battlefield in which the word "DRUGS!" is no longer a massive landmine that invariably stops politicians dead in their tracks.

Each success we achieve in Washington, D.C. is big, and not just in terms of the specific policy implications of a particular event. We're dealing with a political culture that has long deemed it suicidal to deviate even slightly from the drug war doctrine. There's a powerful lesson to be learned each time the drug war loses the vote and no one gets sent home over it.

His attempts to own the word “control” go to ridiculous lengths.

Drugs are controlled (not prohibited) because they are dangerous.

I beg your pardon? Drugs aren’t prohibited? Since when? Where? You can’t just waive a magic wand and say that since you don’t like the word “prohibited” you declare it to mean something else.

Nobody opposes marijuana legalization except more than those who personally profit from prohibition. That much is easy to understand. What's not so easily understood are the arguments they use:

[El Centro Police Chief] McGinley says if pot is legalized in California, it will be a devastating blow to a battle law enforcement has been fighting for years.
…
McGinley says the move would turn back the clock, and take away all the time and effort law enforcement has spent educating people on the dangers of drugs. [KSWT 13 News]

Still, if you think about it, his argument really strikes at the heart of why law enforcement tends to instinctively oppose fixing our drug laws. They've been "educating" the hell out of everyone for decades and hurting an awful lot of people in the process. It would be supremely embarrassing if it suddenly became clear to everyone that legalization actually works a lot better.