Please Stop Telling Politicians That Voters Like the Drug War

With due respect to David Harsanyi and Reason, I'm getting a little tired of being told that politicians and voters are united in opposition to reforming drug laws. How many times have we heard this before?

If polls reflect a growing appetite for legalization of marijuana, why is it that so few elected representatives of note—and by "so few" I mean "no"—support it? If the war on drugs is by all metrics a failure, why is there not a single elected official in D.C. working on the terms of surrender?
…
Voters…are notoriously irrational. And few elected officials can make the case that lawlessness is a reason to disregard laws—that is, unless they aspire to be former elected officials.

Well, maybe the reason more politicians don't come out in favor of reform is because syndicated columnists like David Harsanyi keep insisting – with no evidence whatsoever – that it would be political suicide for them to do so. Anyone who'd like to see major changes to our marijuana laws shouldn’t be spreading the message that public officials will be punished for working on that. It may be true that politicians in D.C. aren't exactly leading the charge for outright marijuana legalization, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be done.

Let's not forget that our President was elected on a platform of respecting medical marijuana laws and generally easing up on the whole "drug war" situation. Was that a problem for him on the campaign trail? Was there any public outcry when Congress reduced the penalties for crack cocaine last month? Can anyone even think of a single politician who's paid a political price for endorsing any sort of reform to our drug policy?

I don't know how anyone could look at the current political climate surrounding drug policy and not see exciting progress. The polls are moving fast in our favor, politicians are beginning to side with us on key issues like medical marijuana and sentencing reform, state-level initiatives are consistently winning big around the country, and the media is taking up the issue in a way we've seen before. To address the politics of drug policy while failing to note all of this renders one's analysis rather dull, if not misleading.

Pete Guither has more.