A new report proving that marijuana is America's number one cash crop has sparked significant interest around the blogoshere, mostly from fair-weather friends of our cause who recognize the absurdity of prohibiting a product of such enduring popularity.

Indeed, this news highlights the failure of prohibition, both for failing to eliminate the market, and for driving its value above that of various more popular vegetables.

But the fun part is reading what the anti-pot crowd has to say. The most entertaining entry in this regard is from Scott Whitlock at Newsbusters: Exposing and Combating Liberal Media Bias, who cites this story as evidence of a liberal media bias at CNN.

It's really funny. First, Whitlock complains that CNN correspondent Stephanie Elam refers to the drug as "our friend marijuana." Of course, Elam's remark is a nod to the fact that Americans spend more on pot than corn, rather than an admission that everyone at CNN loves weed. Whitlock includes the transcript, which makes this quite clear, but why let your own blockquotes get in the way of your argument?

Whitlock finds further evidence of "CNN's fondness for marijuana" in Elam's statement that marijuana legalization is "an interesting idea." Still, "interesting" is an interesting word in that it doesn't always indicate genuine interest. And when it does, interest is often not analogous to agreement. Perhaps Scott Whitlock only says something is "interesting" when he's really strongly in agreement with it, but I must admit that I've often said "that's interesting" when I actually just wanted somebody to shut up.

If CNN is pro-marijuana, that's great news and I can't wait for them to start making actual pro-marijuana statements on TV, but I still don't see what that has to do with liberal media bias. Liberals are more likely than conservatives to support marijuana reform, but there's certainly nothing inherently liberal about opposing the government's ill-conceived war on America's number one cash crop. The best evidence of this comes from Whitlock's own commenters, who come out decidedly in favor of legalization (though I suppose this could be the work of stoned CNN staffers masquerading as conservative blog trolls).

"Stoners Issue Report on Weed" from Christian blogger Jack Lewis comes in at a close second. Rather than lambasting the "liberal media" for reporting the story, Lewis attacks the report's methodology by not reading it and instead guessing what it might have been:

Not being a pot user myself, I had to go look up the price per pound for marijuana. What I could piece together is that the street value ranges from $2,000 to $5,000 per pound.
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Since these are "Hey! Uh...like...legalize, like, marijuana, dude, okay?" types who are obviously cooking the figures to try to make their case, my bet is that they used the $5,000 price or something close. So ultimately we have the conclusion, not that the US produces more marijuana, but that marijuana prices are high enough (or at least the prices they used for their report) to make it more expensive than the cost for the corn and wheat we grow. That speaks more toward the stupidity of marijuana users than anything else.

For the record, the report's author Jon Gettman used a generously low estimate of $1,606 per pound. Reformers aren't the ones who inflate drug prices. That's a law-enforcement trick used to create the appearance that substantial gains have been made in the drug war.

It's amusing that Lewis has nothing to offer other than a weak attempt at refuting the study's conclusions. He implies unintentionally that this data would mean something if it were true. Well since it is true, what does it mean to you, Jack Lewis? We think it shows that marijuana prohibition has failed dramatically. I'm sure you'd hesitate to agree with that, but does it trouble you that prohibition has created a perpetual business opportunity for criminals?

Finally I checked out the Drug Czar's blog to see what ONDCP had to say about all of this. Surely, a thorough and deceptive "debunking" attempt awaited me. But alas, this story was bumped by the fascinating news that the Cullman County Board of Education in Alabama has decided to start drug-testing students who participate in extra-curricular activities.

Maybe they'll write something about this tomorrow. After all, it would be pretty silly to run the world's only exclusive pro-drug war blog and consistently fail to weigh in on the hottest drug policy stories of the day.

I swear, half their hits are just me trying to catch them doing something other than announcing when various school districts start a drug-testing program.