Everybody smoked pot in the sixties

We first heard of this story on Republican candidate for governor, Mitch Daniels' marijuana conviction back in May. A reader sends in a update with an interesting twist. It seems a press conference called by four prominent local Democrats wanting to bring some attention to Daniels arrest for marijuana use in 1970 backfired and ended up with two of the Democrats having to admit youthful consumption and they ended up outing Governor Joe Kernan for having used it as a young person as well.

Don't get me wrong, I love it but you would think the press would show this kind of investigative acumen when they interview the White House. In any event, I think it really underscores the idiocy of this boneheaded war on some drugs when in truth, many more people experimented with this plant in the 60s and 70s than would ever admit it voluntarily. They didn't turn into drug addicts or murderers or thieves, they became our civic leaders. (Okay some of them may have turned into thieves, I mean they did become politicians).

What effect will this have on either side of the race? One would think that it should have none whatsoever. We're talking about guys who smoked a joint 40 years ago for God's sake however, Margaret Ferguson, a political scientist at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, has this to say.

"If we were talking about the rest of the county I would say (the issue) is in the past," she said. "But Indiana is a conservative state."

One hopes the electorate can see through the smoke and simply elect the better candidate based on ability. Knowing substantially nothing about this race, we're not endorsing either side but generally, in any contest, we prefer someone who has consumed cannabis and is open to policy reform. Unfortunately, those kind of candidates are hard to find.