Quote of the day

"Even a casual observer can see that much of the damage done in the US by illegal drugs is a result of the fact that they are illegal, not the fact that they are drugs."

-Clive Crook, in his column in the FT, about how badly the war on drugs has failed.

What's notable about this is that this is being published in one of the most mainstream, Establishment publications on the planet Earth, the Financial Times. The writer, Clive Crook, has worked for the British Treasury and The Economist. He has degrees from Oxford and the London School of Economics. Other than royalty, you do not get more respectable and non-hippie than that. This idea - that the "war on drugs" is a spectacular failure - is quickly becoming the majority mainstream opinion, if it is not already. Eventually politicians will catch up.

Crook is also a blogger for The Atlantic (some great blogs over there), and his fellow blogger, Andrew Sullivan, also a highly educated Englishman, has been running an excellent series he calls "The Cannabis Closet." Pretty much every day for about the last month, he has been posting emails from readers about their experiences with pot. Just about every one is from someone who starts out with some variation of "I'm a respectable suburban professional," and then proceeds to tell the story of how and why they smoke pot. I repeat myself: Eventually politicians will catch up.