Towards the beginning of the cult classic "Dazed & Confused," a high school senior named Slater, inquires of baby-faced freshman Mitch, "Are you cool?" What Slater was really asking—in this ode to 1970s youth and the counterculture—was, "Do you smoke pot?"

Ahh the '70s. Back before the Reagan Revolution kicked the kooky, corrupt and thoroughly counterproductive War On Drugs into high gear. Suddenly this country lost its collective mind, suffering a lapse in judgment that vaulted well past ill-advised and beyond "they have weapons of mass destruction" to what might best be labeled "the mind of Ted Nugent."

By any measure; economically, morally, democratically, we are the worse for allowing special interests—from private prisons to the security industry—to take us down this road. It has spiritually hollowed us out, while erecting a prominent prison culture that makes The People's Republic of China seem like Woodstock.

This was made all the more evident recently when a Harvard economist, Jeffrey Miron, released a study showing this exercise in dunderheadedness is costing us $13.7 billion a year. Ernest A. Canning points to some statistics reported on Democracy Now! showing that "over the last 40 years, more than 45 million drug-related arrests have cost an estimated $1 trillion."

Hmm, I can't think of any better way we could have spent this money, can you?

But I do know some neo-conservative types who seemingly kneel down in prayer a few times a day to make supple offerings to the graven idol of The Balanced Budget. You'd think they might notice a statistic like this and do something to save money being wasted on imprisoning people who take their mind altering substances through the beer bong, as opposed to a funnel, filter, or medically-approved prescription pill bottle. Although, as Paul Ryan has found out when weighing raising taxes on ascots vs. slashing social programs, it's just so much easier and more fun to cut basic healthcare programs from kids than to honestly tackle real problems.

Sadly, things have gotten no better under President Obama than they were under his predecessors. Back when he was running for President in 2008, Obama claimed to support the “basic concept of using medical marijuana for the same purposes and with the same controls as other drugs,” He even went further, claiming he would "not be using Justice Department resources to try to circumvent state laws.”

Yet, that is exactly what he has done, using the very same Justice Department to raid over 100 marijuana dispensaries during his term. It is shameful really.

The wasted potential of those who will go to our jails instead of our colleges (although at least Rick Santorum won't shake his head in not-so-subtle disapproval of their obvious snobbery) will not only cost these individuals and their families dearly, but our society as a whole. Much like with our health care system, when we ignore or create problems in the short term, they always come back to haunt us as the Ghost of Christmas past—and not the cool one played by Buster Poindexter in Scrooged, either.

Listen, if you don't want to believe any of this, just see what Pat Robertson had to say about this issue recently (yes, I too am stunned I just wrote that). Yes, he took some time off from blaming hurricanes on abortion and "The Way We Were," to come out for marijuana legalization. Now I'm not going to say I think his every neuron is firing in what one might call a fecund direction, but on this one, politicians should listen. They should pay even more attention to the people of this country, who, by a 47 percent plurality, favor marijuana legalization.

Because if we continue with the half-baked idea of expanding this war, we will also continue to watch our financial future, our moral fiber and our civil liberties go up in smoke.

This piece was first published at Al Jazeera English

[Video Not Safe For Work]

Elon James White, one of our favorite comedians and a Netroots Nation stalwart, channels a lot of people's sentiments in this video. It might be NSFW, but White says a lot of things that need saying.

It's part of the ACLU's campaign to End the War on Drugs:

June 2011 marked the 40th anniversary of President Richard Nixon's declaration of a "war on drugs" — a war that has cost roughly a trillion dollars, has produced little to no effect on the supply of or demand for drugs in the United States, and has contributed to making America the world's largest incarcerator.

The war on drugs has sent millions of people to prison for low-level offenses, and seriously eroded our civil liberties and civil rights while costing taxpayers billions of dollars a year, with nothing to show for it except our status as the world's largest incarcerator. There are 2.3 million people behind bars in this country — that is triple the amount of prisoners we had in 1987 — and 25 percent of those incarcerated are locked up for drug offenses. Taxpayers spend almost $70 billion a year on corrections and incarceration. A far more sensible way to deal with a public health problem like drug addiction is to provide treatment, which study after study has shown is more effective than incarceration.

Through advocacy and litigation, the ACLU has been seeking an end to this failed war on drugs and our costly addiction to incarceration for decades. Go here to read more about the ACLU’s work to end to excessively harsh crime policies that result in mass incarceration and stand in the way of a just and equal society.

There is a series of posts on the subject at the ACLU's Blog of Rights. Be sure to check it out.

The Moderate Voice: Journalistic Malpractice

The Spiderlegs Conundrum: The Rules of Disinformation (h/t Swimgiril)

Liberal Values: The GOP's latest plan for congress

Rising Hegemon: What E.J. Dionne says

Mercury Rising: Why the War on Drugs Exists, Reason # 1324087

ANNALS OF JOURNALISM: It’s scary out there in reporting land and Wikileaks is Exhibit A...Here's some good work...CNN completely sells out...Crisis of the Public Intellectual...No 'crisis' here...Another villager who hates you...Actual journalism...J School...NYT vs. WaPo on life in Gaza...

Well, semi-happy news for anyone who thinks our draconian anti-drug laws are a huge waste of money in a state that can ill-afford it. It's a shame that our Governator doesn't believe that we should legalize marijuana entirely, given his ... well...actions in his younger, body-building days. But hey, it's a step in the right direction:

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who opposes legalization of marijuana for recreational use, has approved legislation downgrading possession of an ounce or less from a misdemeanor to an infraction.

Supporters say the change will keep marijuana-related cases from becoming court-clogging jury trials, even though the penalty will remain a fine of up to $100, with no jail time. Violations will not go on a person's record as a crime.

"I am signing this measure because possession of less than an ounce of marijuana is an infraction in everything but name," Schwarzenegger wrote in a message released after he signed the bill. "In this time of drastic budget cuts, prosecutors, defense attorneys, law enforcement and the courts cannot afford to expend limited resources prosecuting a crime that carries the same punishment as a traffic ticket."

Randy Thomasson, president of the family values group SaveCalifornia.com, criticized the move by Schwarzenegger, who was shown smoking a marijuana joint in the 1977 documentary "Pumping Iron."

"This virtual legalization of marijuana definitely sends the wrong message to teenagers and young adults," Thomasson said in a statement Friday. "It invites youth to become addicted to mind-altering pot because there's not much hassle and no public stigma and no rehab if they're caught."

Dale Gieringer, director of California NORML, which supports legalization, said the opposite.

"Gov. Schwarzenegger deserves credit for sparing the state's taxpayers the cost of prosecuting minor pot offenders," Gieringer said in a statement. "Californians increasingly recognize that the war on marijuana is a waste of law enforcement resources."

The new law, SB 1449 by Sen. Mark Leno (D- San Francisco), takes effect Jan 1.

The governor's action immediately became a point of contention in the campaigns for and against Proposition 19 on the statewide November ballot, which would legalize marijuana for recreational use. Schwarzenegger opposes the measure.

By the way, if the name Randy Thomasson sounds vaguely familiar to you, it's because he is the same guy front and center advocating for Prop 8 (the law banning gay marriage in California) several years ago. Ironically, it appears that he's using the exact same fear tactics in scaring Californians against marijuana use.

(h/t GottaLaff)

What makes me saddest of all things in the world is this: the vast majority of the time the right thing to do morally is the right thing to do in terms of broad self-interest, and yet we don’t believe that and we do the wrong thing, thinking we must, thinking that we’re making the “hard decisions”.

This spans the spectrum of issues. It doesn’t matter whether you’re talking about foreign affairs, where the money used on Iraq and Afghanistan could have rebuilt America and made it more prosperous. It doesn’t matter if you’re talking about health care, where everyone knew that the right thing to do was single payer or some other form of comprehensive healthcare, which would have reduced bankruptcies massively, saved 6% of GDP and massive numbers of lives. It doesn’t matter if you’re talking about the financial crisis, where criminally prosecuting those who engaged in fraud (the entire executive class of virtually ever major financial firm) and nationalizing the major banks, wiping out the shareholders and making the bondholders eat their losses was the right thing to do, and didn’t happen. It doesn’t matter if you’re talking about drug policy, where the “war on drugs” has accomplished nothing except destabilizing multiple countries and giving the US the largest prison population proportional to population in the entire world and where legalizing marijuana, soft opiates and coca leaves would save billions of dollars, reduce violence, help stabilize Mexico and would help tax receipts. It doesn’t matter if you’re talking about food, where we subsidize the most unhealthy foods possible and engage in practices which have reduced the nutritional content of food by 40% in the last half century. It doesn’t matter if you’re talking about environmental pollutants, which have contributed to a massive rise in chronic diseases so great it amounts to an epidemic.

And on, and on, and on.

Now the fact is that there is no free lunch. When you spend money on war, you can’t spend it on education or health or crumbling infrasture or civilian technology. When you allow oligopolies to control the marketplace and buy up politicians, the cost of that is a decreased standard of living. When you refuse to deal effective with externalized health pollution, whether from soda pop or carcinogens, you pay for that with the death of people you care for from heart disease, cancer and other illnesses.

The response is “we have to do this to protect ourselves/to make a profit”.

No, you don’t.

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Practical Solutions to End the War on Drugs - Alex Wodak

HuffPo:

The Associated Press has just dropped a bombshell on America's longest running war and the headline says it all: "The US Drug War has Met None of its Goals".

The extensive piece reviews the last 40 years, starting with President Nixon's official launch of the War on Drugs all the way to President Obama's annual strategy released this week. [..]

The piece packs a punch from the start: "After 40 years, the United States' War on Drugs has cost $1 trillion dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives, and for what? Drug use is rampant and violence more brutal and widespread."

Contemplate that number for a minute: ONE TRILLION DOLLARS. These costs are absurd:

In 40 years, taxpayers spent more than:

_ $20 billion to fight the drug gangs in their home countries. In Colombia, for example, the United States spent more than $6 billion, while coca cultivation increased and trafficking moved to Mexico — and the violence along with it.

_ $33 billion in marketing "Just Say No"-style messages to America's youth and other prevention programs. High school students report the same rates of illegal drug use as they did in 1970, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says drug overdoses have "risen steadily" since the early 1970s to more than 20,000 last year.

_ $49 billion for law enforcement along America's borders to cut off the flow of illegal drugs. This year, 25 million Americans will snort, swallow, inject and smoke illicit drugs, about 10 million more than in 1970, with the bulk of those drugs imported from Mexico.

_ $121 billion to arrest more than 37 million nonviolent drug offenders, about 10 million of them for possession of marijuana. Studies show that jail time tends to increase drug abuse.

_ $450 billion to lock those people up in federal prisons alone. Last year, half of all federal prisoners in the U.S. were serving sentences for drug offenses.

At the same time, drug abuse is costing the nation in other ways. The Justice Department estimates the consequences of drug abuse — "an overburdened justice system, a strained health care system, lost productivity, and environmental destruction" — cost the United States $215 billion a year.

And for what? Drug use is no lower. Violent crimes related to drugs are up. And nearly half of our overly-crowded prisons are in there for drug offenses. There is absolutely nothing constructive to show for this 40 year boondoggle. Hell, we could have used that money to implement a Single Payer system, something we could see a very tangible benefit from in a short period of time.

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Have you noticed how the people who defend Arizona's new police-state immigration law constantly conflate the issue of illegal immigration with drug-related violence?

Indeed, the entire rationale we're hearing from Arizonans for why they passed this law points to incidents and issues arising not from illegal immigration, but from the activities of Mexican drug cartels along the border.

It happened again yesterday on Your World with Neil Cavuto on Fox News. Cavuto hosted two Arizonans eager to defend their state's honor from the threat of boycotts -- Phoenix city councilman Sal DiCiccio, and Barry Broome from the Greater Phoenix Economic Council. Broome, it's worth noting, was threatening retaliation if people organize boycotts against Arizona. (Ooooooh. We're quaking, dude.)

But it was DiCiccio -- predictably, a right-wing Republican -- who conflated drug-war problems with immigration issues:

DiCiccio: You know, if you look at what's happening in the state of Arizona -- I really want to talk about this, this is more a plea to the national audience -- they need to take a look at what's happening in our state. In the city of Phoenix alone, the area that I control along with the other members of the council and the mayor, but we have a responsibility to protect our citizenry. We had over 350 kidnappings in the city of Phoenix alone, primarily due to the illegal immigrant trade.

But, while human smugglers have been part of Phoenix's kidnapping scene, according to Phoenix police, the vast majority of these kidnappings have been related to Mexican drug cartels. Illegal immigrants, as the L.A. Times story explains, often are drawn into kidnapping work on behalf of the cartels -- but the violence is a result of their employer's line of work, not the fact that they are immigrants.

As we noted previously, much of the hysteria that was whipped up to push this bill through was based on the murder of Arizona rancher Robert Krentz, who was in fact almost certainly slain by a scout for the drug cartels.

Nonetheless, the Right -- embodied by Fox News -- consistently described his killer as an "illegal immigrant" -- even though the man was not crossing the border to emigrate, but to enable drug crossings on the border.

In other words, the Krentz case was not about illegal immigration, but drug smuggling across the border. The issues, as we've seen are not entirely separate: the cartels and human smugglers work hand in glove to control the trails over the border.

But the power and violence of Mexican drug cartels is not related to illegal immigration. It is related to our misbegotten drug laws, and the fact that the Mexican government is in an ongoing war getting control of heavily armed thugs who obtain their money and weapons through the sale of illicit drugs, largely to American consumers.

If Arizonans were serious about dealing with the crime wave they're seeing, they'd be pushing for marijuana-decriminalization laws, or some other more sane approach that actually tackles the core of the problem.

Instead, they're passing laws that try to tackle drug-war problems by attacking illegal immigrants, who represent a tertiary scapegoat at best. In the process, they're turning Arizona into a police state for Latinos, citizens and immigrants alike, who now must carry "their papers" proving their citizenship with them at all times, or run the risk of being swept up in a Kafkaesque law-enforcement nightmare.

Performances like DiCiccio's and Moore's do little to dissuade people that something is amiss in Arizona. Indeed, they just give us all the more reason to boycott them.

Law Enforcement Against Prohibition: FBI numbers prove that the 'War on Drugs' is a failure

Wall St. Cheat Sheet: Congressman Alan Grayson talks Fed transparency and missing money

Culture Monster: Glenn Beck and Freedom Works' 9/12 logo based on communist and socialist designs

The New Republic: Wealthcare

Echidne of the Snakes: Guarding our hearts and wallets

Sadly, No!: Quick Question

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When President Obama opened his Online Town Hall session today, he offered some generic remarks about why the White House was undertaking this:

Now, I'm looking forward to taking your questions and hearing your thoughts and concerns. Because what matters to you and your families and what people in Washington are focused on isn't always one and the same thing.

He apparently forgot this when the questions from the American public came in and the votes were tallied, because one of the issues that came rising to the surface was marijuana legalization, as Politico reports:

Given the opportunity to say what’s really on their minds without going through the filter of the mainstream media, people “buzzed up” a series of questions that seemed to suggest broad interest in legalizing marijuana and taxing it.

In this moment of national economic crisis, the top four questions under the heading of “Financial security” concerned marijuana; on the budget, people voted up questions about marijuana to positions 1-4; marijuana was in the first and third positions under “jobs”; people boosted a plug for legalizing marijuana to No. 2 under “health care reform.” And questions about decriminalizing pot occupied spots 1 and 2 under “green jobs and energy.”

After taking questions lower on the list, Obama addressed the pot issue head on, noting the huge number of questions about marijuana legalization and remarking with a chuckle, “I don't know what that says about the online audience."

"The answer is no, I don't think that is a good strategy to grow our economy," he said, as the audience in the room applauded and joined him in a laugh.

Politico tries to fob the intense interest in the matter off on NORML activists, but that overlooks the real dynamic: the "war on drugs" is a kitchen-table issue that affects millions of Americans in their homes, especially as we watch the tremendous waste of national resources spent criminalizing people who need medical treatment, and we witness the costs to our national and personal security in the form of the raging drug war on the Mexican border.

Indeed, just yesterday Secretary of State Clinton just observed that "Our insatiable demand for illegal drugs fuels the drug trade" and that "what we have been doing has not worked and it is unfair for our incapacity... to be creating a situation where people are holding the Mexican government and people responsible." At what point will we finally wake up and recognize the high cost of an ineffectual drug policy maintained purely out of political cowardice?

It's understandable that Obama wants to keep his eye on the ball and not let his agenda get derailed by a national argument about drugs. But dealing intelligently and effectively with drugs in the end is part of that economic and national-security picture too -- perhaps not as big a driver as health care or energy, but it plays a role. The president would be wise to heed his own words about listening to what people outside the Beltway are actually saying to him.

Meanwhile, as Jeralyn notes, the Obama administration has already gone back on its promise that it will cease raiding medical-marijuana operations ...

Blue Gal subbing for Mike, who is traveling today.

David Stephenson: How to Twitter your way out of foreign jail.

Politits: Knowledge equals discontent, especially in that dress, Jenna.

Group News Blog: Once again the war on drugs is a collosal fark up. But hey, if the Saginaw, Michigan PD had been put in charge of killing Castro, Cuba would have been freed by like, 2007. Oh nevermind.

Leisureguy: If you don't like history, just delete it.

The Klog: Chinese warning