Dr. Jocelyn Elders ignited a firestorm when she proposed studying the merits of drug legalization while serving as Surgeon General under President Clinton. It was a bold move back then and she's still eager to speak out in favor of reform:

You’re also a vocal proponent of medical marijuana. Why?

I have been speaking out about it for a long time. I’m a member of the board of advisors of a medical marijuana group. To me, it’s not nearly as toxic for our bodies as tobacco or alcohol. It should be legalized. As far as we know, it doesn’t cause lung cancer, it doesn’t cause people to go out and drive drunk and commit crimes. If it helps reduce the nausea and vomiting and reduce leg cramps, make patients feel better, what’s wrong with that? We should make it available to people who need it. I feel if people want marijuana, they could get a prescription. Then we can tax it and know who is getting it. I don’t think it is a drug that is doing harm to this country. By arresting people, putting them in jail for crimes related to marijuana, we’re spending millions on drug enforcement and it causes more problems. Young people are convicted of a crime, they can’t get money to go to school, we have over 2 million prisoners and many related to drug use—it is a vicious cycle and one we created. [New America Media]

She gets it. In fact, she got it a long time ago.

O'Reilly said a couple pretty nasty things about the Dutch recently, prompting this delightful response from some genius on YouTube:



Now O'Reilly responds to the response, and check how he addresses the question of why rates of marijuana use are lower in the Netherlands than the U.S.:

Why have so many more people in the USA, where marijuana is illegal, tried it? 40% of people in the USA compared to 22.6%...

OREILLY (interrupting): The way they use statistics in the Netherlands is different, plus it's a much smaller country.

Huh? The guy just lies so reflexively, it's astonishing. Of course, by denying the validity of the statistics, he tacitly acknowledges that they would be significant if they were true. Well, they are true, Bill, which means all your paranoid fulminations about the horrors of legalization are nonsense.

I just hope he's right that the U.S. is on course to implement Dutch-style drug policies.

Russ Belville shares the fascinating story of some "higher ups" at CBS pulling the plug on a NORML radio show that was about to go on the air. The whole thing is magnificently absurd considering that CBS owns Showtime, home of the hit series Weeds.

If CBS has a problem with marijuana, then they really shouldn’t be out there making money by sensationalizing it. Boy, it would really suck for CBS if word got out among Weeds viewers that the show's corporate owners have some kind of problem with debating marijuana laws.

I sometimes wonder if we rely too heavily on the argument that marijuana is safer than alcohol and tobacco. People who don't know anything about marijuana (which comprise a substantial portion of our opposition) may have a hard time understanding what we mean by that. Moreover, it's tricky to compare the totality of harm produced by those drugs vs. marijuana because our opponents obscure the analysis by blaming the harms of alcohol and tobacco on their legality.

Inevitably, the argument that marijuana is safer than alcohol and tobacco suffers by virtue of the fact that those drugs are pretty dangerous. Being safer than them doesn’t mean it's safe. So for a while now, I've been trying to think of something else to compare it to and I think Pete Guither nails it in this post.

Remind me why hemp is illegal to grow in the U.S.:

…if you drive a BMW or a Mercedes Benz, or wear Armani jeans or Patagonia shirts, you could be consuming hemp.

Its fiber turns up in car door panels, insulation and clothing. Its seeds make tasty granola and frozen desserts, its oil expensive cosmetics and ecologically friendly soap.

If you use these products, you won’t be jailed for possession. But would-be hemp farmers’ fear of arrest is what keeps the U.S. importing the stuff instead of growing its own. [Bloomberg]

I don't write about hemp often, mainly because it's not actually a drug, but it bears repeating that the only reason hemp cultivation is illegal is because a bunch of paranoid drug warriors are utterly terrified of it. As stupid as the arguments against legalizing marijuana are, the case against hemp is even more mindless and pathetic.

Just pause for a moment and think about the fact that the DEA banned a substance used to make door panels for luxury cars, simply because it's related to marijuana. That level of marijuana hysteria probably wouldn’t be possible in the current political climate, but we're stuck with it until Congress admits this is ridiculous.

And I guarantee you that if Congress attempts to legalize hemp cultivation in the U.S., there will actually be people who freak out about it and try to argue that hemp somehow endangers America's youth.