Good Reads

I'm enjoying the Detroit News guest slot but it's interfering a little with my usual routine so I hadn't checked on Pete at Drug War Rant for a few days. He's on a roll, read everything he wrote this week. He's got an good take on Ashcroft's new war on porn and a fabulous deconstruction (or would that be demolition) of a Mark Kleiman piece on drug control. I love it when he takes on Kleiman. He always tears Mark to shreds, but it does it so politely. I wish I could manage that kind of civility with the man.

Across the pond, there's an excellent op-ed piece in the Belfast Telegraph on cannabis policy. Features editor Eamonn McCann looks at the politics of legalization in Ireland and makes some good points about how people perceive public support for it. He asks why, with so many people agreeing privately that it makes sense, don't they come forward to change the laws?

Using a survey done in Vermont and Rhode Island he illustrates this odd anomaly. On the question of whether medical marijuana should be legal, 71% in Vermont and 69% in Rhode Island said yes. However, when asked if they thought the majority of voters agreed with them, 37% and 60% respectively thought they were not. It doesn't make sense. As McCann says:

The only explanation I can think of is that the relentless promotion of untruth about marijuana has so clouded the minds of ordinarily intelligent people that even thinking on it makes them feel dizzy.

This reinforces my long-held belief that rational discussion of drugs problems will continue to be impossible while marijuana remains tainted by illegality.

Perception is everything.

[Link thanks to Eric Mytko ]