A slowdown of the “war on drugs” is always a good thing. As Knapp points out, the casualties of the drug war have probably reached Holocaust levels by now. Although as the drug war recedes, look for the state to identify new targets, which could be anything from promoting sex trafficking hysteria (which is already happening) to anti-anti-vaxxer hysteria  to guns, “hate,” crime generally, terrorism, gangs. Come to think of it, all of this is already happening as well.

By Thomas L. Knapp, Garrison Center

The conventional wisdom of the last hundred years or so: The US government can and should decide what we may eat, drink, smoke, inject, or otherwise ingest. It can and should kidnap and cage us if we disobey, and if its restrictions kill us with adulterated or unduly strong black market products, it’s our own fault for not doing as we’re told.

Common sense: Unless you’re a six-year-old listening to your mother’s stern “no broccoli, no dessert” lecture, what you choose to eat, drink, smoke, inject, or otherwise ingest is nobody’s business but yours.

November 3 was D-Day in common sense’s war to shatter the conventional wisdom.

“Of nine drug decriminalization or legalization measures on state ballots,” Elizabeth Nolan Brown reports at Reason, “not a single one failed. These were decisive victories, too, not close calls.”

Americans from coast to coast, north to south, in states red and blue, voted by huge margins to nullify federal laws on medical and/or recreational marijuana, psychedelics, even “hard” drugs.

The US government’s war on drugs is going to end sooner or later. Sooner is better for everyone, so let’s start talking about the terms of DC’s surrender.

Given the millions of arrests, imprisonments, overdoses and murders, etc. caused by the war on drugs — numbers exceeding the Armenian genocide beyond a shadow of doubt, and quite possibly competing for pride of place with Hitler’s atrocities — Americans could hardly be blamed for convening a Nuremberg-style tribunal and stretching some drug warrior necks. The longer this nonsense drags on, the more likely that outcome.

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