Wednesday, the White House announced a new direction in the War on Drugs, where stopping drug use before it starts and treating drug addition as a health issue will now be priorities.
I'm calling bullshit. First, state laws are what lock the most people up anyway. Second, Obama has been a down right fascist on the whole medical marijuana game. Third, they still use the term "effective law enforcement", which, unless you think that the cops were conspiring to do an extra shitty job, is euphemism for "business as usual". Fourth, the prison industrial complex has too much power to effectively corral. On another level, we should stop treating drugs as a primary cause of problems, and instead view them (more correctly) as a symptom of a more systemic disease (depression or anxiety, for example). Heavy drug use leads to all sorts of problems, but unless the focus is on treating the disease (which isn't primarily drug addiction, but probably mental health), then we will get nowhere.
Exactly, and you can bet that the state laws only have a chance of changing in small handful of states. They may want to change the drug policy, but it won't be happening anytime soon.
Sort of expected this to be an Onion article, or perhaps another fake newspaper from the Yes Men. Edit: More info Interesting bits: and The Department of Justice is weighing its legal response to the state laws, but the White House's drug czar maintained on Wednesday that they would not affect his office."Rather, the strategy pursues a 21st century approach to drug policy that balances public health programs, effective law enforcement, and international partnerships. This 'third way' is rooted in the knowledge that drug addiction is a disease of the brain — one that can be treated, recovered from, and, most importantly, prevented."
The release of the strategy comes as the federal government wrestles with recently approved policies in Washington state and Colorado that legalize the use of marijuana. In November, voters in those states approved ballot measures that allowed recreational use of the drug, putting the states at odds with federal law.