This month marks the 40th year of the War on Drugs, but the Republican love affair with pot prohibition certainly isn’t experiencing a ruby anniversary. On Monday, the editors of the National Review called the federal drug war a “colossal failure“:
It has curtailed personal freedom, created a violent black market, and filled our prisons. It has also trampled on states’ rights: Sixteen states have legalized “medical marijuana”—which is, admittedly, often code for legalizing pot in general—only to clash with federal laws that ban weed throughout the land.
That last sin is not the War on Drugs’ greatest, but it is not insignificant, either. A bill introduced by Reps. Barney Frank (D., Mass.) and Ron Paul (R., Texas) would remove the federal roadblock to state marijuana reform, and though the Republican House seems almost certain to reject it, the proposal deserves support from across the political spectrum.
Though the National Review has argued for legalizing marijuana off and on since the 1970s, it has a lot more friends on the Right these days. As I noted last year, pot-friendly Republicans now include everyone from Arnold Schwarzenegger and Tom Tancredo to Sarah Palin and Rick Perry. There’s even a Tea Pot Party informally led by the Red State stoner-in-chief, Willie Nelson. His new pro-legalization video for NORML is below. . .
