The debate over legalization is heating up in California, and from the looks of things, the two sides aren’t even speaking the same language. Here's Judge James Gray speaking from experience about the advantages of regulating marijuana:



And here's the best response the opposition could put together:



Stay tuned, folks. There will be plenty more stupid crap where that came from, I assure you. But if those tired old clichés were worth anything anymore, legalization wouldn’t be on the tip of every tongue in California and beyond.

This conversation is an inherent victory for us, while our opposition's response is just another embarrassment for them.

You know that border fence we've spent billions of dollars building? Yeah, it's not really helping so much:

SAN MIGUEL, Ariz. — A pickup truck in Mexico pulls up to the 5-foot vehicle barriers that make up part of the multibillion-dollar border fence. A retractable ramp is extended from the truck, forming a bridge up and over the barriers.

Then, a second pickup — this one loaded with a ton of marijuana — rolls over the bridge and into the U.S.

With gadgetry such as custom-built ramps as well as ultralight planes, false doors and good old-fashioned duct tape, smugglers have demonstrated unbounded creativity when it comes to sneaking drugs across the Mexican border. And the U.S. government acknowledges there is only so much it can do to stop the flow. [AP]

Unfortunately, our brave drug soldiers are convinced that expensive and futile interdiction efforts are better than nothing:

"We have to keep it at a manageable level so society can continue to operate," said Elizabeth Kempshall, agent in charge of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's office in Arizona.

They're literally insisting that society will collapse if they don't keep doing this. It's awfully silly when you consider that almost all the drugs are already getting through anyway. If that stuff were going to destroy our society, it would have happened already.

But don't bother trying to explain that to the drug warriors, because they're too busy thinking of new ways to waste money in an attempt to "win" something:

"This is a war of technology, and I believe that the only way we are going to win it is if our technology is better than theirs," said Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard.

The fact that our approach to substance abuse has evolved into a "war of technology" is just ridiculous. We'll never get anywhere with this nonsense no matter how many times we double down on our investment. It's plainly absurd to suggest that we can outspend our opponents when the game makes them obscenely rich while costing us billions.

It's like arguing that the secret to winning with scratch-off tickets is to constantly buy more and more of them.