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Paul Armentano at NORML has the details. He rightly points out that we can only imagine how much progress could have made towards developing promising marijuana-derived treatments if the government and the press hadn’t spent the last several decades trying to vilify marijuana instead of examining its potential.

It's a plant, and like other plants, it's here to help us. It's probably just a matter of time until marijuana's full potential as a cancer cure is discovered, and when that happens, the consequences of decades of mindless anti-pot propaganda will be revealed like never before.

Anyone applying for a job at the Drug Enforcement Administration must answer this question:



That's funny, I thought there was no such thing as "legally prescribed" marijuana under federal law. Either this is an idiot test for prospective applicants, or we've come so far that the DEA is beginning to lose track of its own ideology.

As the call for legalization continues to reverberate louder than ever before, the hired soldiers in the war on drugs are seeking to defend their livelihood with arguments of unprecedented desperation and incoherence:

Legalization is not the solution, [statewide CAMP Commander Michael] Johnson said, given that most of the pot is being grown illegally on public parkland by foreign citizens who cannot be taxed. [San Francisco Chronicle]

You won't have to tax them because they'll be out of business. No one's going to buy some crappy weed that's grown illegally and destructively in our national forests if there's an alternative. The instant you allow California's legions of skilled and socially conscious marijuana growers to operate in a regulated and legitimate environment, everything ugly and uncontrollable about the state's marijuana industry will change overnight.

Just watch how he proves my point:

"I've been doing this for five years, and there just seems to be more and more of it everywhere," Johnson said. "We don't even bother with medicinal grows. What we're concerned about is the destruction of the habitat."

See how he admits that the "medicinal grows" are not what's causing the problem? That's because they're legal and regulated. It really isn’t any more complicated than that.

Remember last week when the new drug czar Gil Kerlikowske dusted off the old drug czar pocket manual and whipped out the classic "marijuana is dangerous and has no medicinal benefit" line? Well, Tim Dickinson at Rolling Stone recalls his recent interview with Kerlikowske, in which the new drug czar claimed the verdict wasn't in yet on marijuana's medical benefits:

This is a striking departure from what Kerlikowske told me in an interview in May.

Because of the restrictive terms the Vice President’s office imposed on our interview, I’m not at liberty to quote the drug czar directly.

But when I asked Kerlikowske for an example of how he hoped to bring sound science back to Office of National Drug Control Policy, he told me that science would answer whether smoked marijuana has any medical benefit.

That’s a question that science answers, he told me, not ideology.

So when the drug czar is talking to Rolling Stone, he cares about science, but when he's hanging out with a bunch of drug cops in California, he's got no problem spouting off pathetically false and antiquated drug war propaganda. Beautiful.

Of course, even the earlier position about waiting for the science to explain everything to us is flagrantly dishonest. Everyone knows what the science says and it's been that way for a long time now. It's really just disgusting to act confused about it when an extraordinary number of real human beings with real illnesses are standing before you eager to share the stories of how medical marijuana has improved and sometimes saved their lives.

So whichever position the drug czar ultimately decides to stick with, he's a liar either way.

Last week we reported that the crime subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee had unanimously passed H.R. 3245, a bill to reduce federal crack cocaine penalties to the same level as those for offenses involving powder cocaine. The full Judiciary Committee approved the bill today, we just heard, by a vote of 16-9. I'll post back with a link to the roll call when it becomes available on Thomas, or follow the link to the bill above to check in the meanwhile. Reports indicate it is expected to be taken up on the floor of the House of Representatives, and that a bipartisan Senate bill is expected out soon too. So this is big news. Not the only big news -- read more in our current top Chronicle feature, "Winds of Change Are Blowing in Washington -- Drug Reforms Finally Move in Congress."

President Calderon's epic drug war escalation is rapidly becoming an unprecedented exhibit in the absolute futility of everything drug prohibition stands for. The harder you fight, the more you lose, and that realization is increasingly beginning to sink in:

There are now sustained calls in Mexico for a change in tactics, even from allies within Calderón's political party, who say the deployment of 45,000 soldiers to fight the cartels is a flawed plan that relies too heavily on the blunt force of the military to stem soaring violence and lawlessness. [Washington Post]

No kidding. How are soldiers supposed to "stem soaring violence" when their deployment is causing it? Violence is what soldiers do for a living.

U.S. officials said they now believe Mexico faces a longer and bloodier campaign than anticipated and is likely to require more American aid.

They didn't anticipate this. Seriously. Anyone who's surprised by this outcome has no business working on international drug policy, let alone allocating American tax dollars towards programs that do the exact opposite of what they think.

U.S. and Mexican government officials say the military strategy, while difficult, is working.

What does that even mean? You said you were trying to reduce violence and you increased it. Unless your goal is to eventually kill everyone in Mexico, it's not working.

"This battle is a full frontal assault," Monte Alejandro Rubido, Calderon's senior adviser on drug policy on Mexico's National Security Council, said in an interview. "There are no alternatives."

Yes there are. And the only rational and humane choice you have is to begin discussing them now before thousands more lives are needlessly lost. There is only so much the Mexican people can tolerate and it's really just a matter of time before the war has to be stopped. This plan didn't work last year and it won’t start working next year.

It's not hard to understand the reluctance of so many who bear responsibility for this to admit that they've been wrong all along. The countless lives lost and destroyed are not something anyone wants on their conscience and the human mind is a powerful tool for shielding desperate people from uncomfortable truths. Still, the battlefield that smolders before us is obviously here to stay as long as we continue down the hopeless path our governments have chosen for us. As long as this has gone on, it nonetheless stands to reason that it cannot continue forever.

It is vastly nobler to admit failure in the name of progress than to continue it out of fear and shame.