Blog Credo

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

H.L. Mencken

Saturday, March 30, 2013

Forget Drones

To the barricades!  Comfortably!

http://news.yahoo.com/kansas-couple-indoor-gardening-prompted-pot-raid-182449463.html

The "War on Drugs" has been a spectacular failure.  But, like Iraq, it doesn't mean we don't get "surges" once in awhile.

If we assume a change in cultural attitudes similar to what we are seeing with gay marriage, I think we can see a gradual decriminalization of marijuana in certain states over the next few years.

Significantly, my own position is that the buying and selling of marijuana should remain illegal.  I don't want to see the RJR Reynolds of pot come into being.  But growing for personal consumption or growing for medicinal purposes regulated by the state seems fine to me.  If I have a libertarian streak, it applies to social issues like this.

Anyway, the family targeted in this raid were wronged, and it goes to the militarization and surveillance state aspects of the drug war that are much more troublesome than hypothetical drones over American cities.

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