The harsh treatment meted out to Brittney Griner gives us a glimpse of the human cost of the so-called war on drugs. Daniel Lazare looks at five decades of horror

Hypocrisy and imperialism go hand in hand, especially when the latter is of the “democratic” variety. Take Brittney Griner and Viktor Bout, one a victim of “needless trauma” imposed by a heartless Kremlin, according to Joe Biden, and the other an example of “intelligence operatives engaged in nefarious activity” on behalf of the same rogue state, according to CNN.¹

One is a non-white, non-hetero basketball star and the other a renegade arms dealer, a contrast that supposedly speaks volumes about America’s life-affirming values versus Russia’s embrace of war and oppression. What’s more, Biden was not completely incorrect in blasting Putin for treating Griner so harshly. After all, the hash oil that Russian customs officials found in her luggage last February is no worse than vodka or cigarettes – and probably a whole lot better, given the latter’s well-known health hazards. So why throw her in prison for a substance that does no harm to others and therefore should rightfully be regarded as her affair alone?

But American outrage is itself outrageous, since no country is worse when it comes to the needless prosecution of victimless crimes. Over the last half-century, the war on drugs that Richard Nixon declared in June 1971 has unleashed a tidal wave of global destruction in which millions have died, millions more have wound up behind bars, and violence has been sent rocketing to levels that make prohibition-era Chicago seem like a minor disturbance.

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