Eyes on the Windy City

Well, it's Monday morning already and I didn't manage to update my blogroll and totally neglected this blog in favor of posting at DetNews this weekend. With the election less than a month away, I think the most important thing we can all do for drug policy reform is to depose the Bush regime and if it doesn't happen in Michigan, it won't be because I didn't try hard enough to convince middle America that it's the right thing to do.

While I've been thus distracted however, others are keeping their eye on this war on some drugs. Stephen Young of the new blog decrimwatch has a piece up at Alternet on Sanity in Chicago analyzing the current situation on decrim there. He makes some great points.

Federal hypocrisy aside, Chicago's fines for a pot plan sounds OK, but regulation and a mild tax would be much better. Government shouldn't have to depend on people breaking the law to generate revenue when it could depend on people obeying the law to generate revenue.

Indeed they shouldn't but as Stephen notes, the greater good in this proposal is in the long term results.

At the very least some obscured truth seems to be ripe for mass recognition across the United States: Using the limited resources of law enforcement to arrest our way toward a pot-free America is a stupid, short-sighted waste. Even the federal freakin' drug czar understands marijuana arrests are a malicious luxury he can no longer afford to demand.

From Stephen's mouth to our legislator's ears. We are long overdue to admit as a society that cannabis consumers are not criminals.