Another glorious example of stupidity in our drug war

NATION: "N.D. farmers appeal to grow hemp: Legal in Canada, plant can be used in manufacturing," by Donna Leinwand, USA Today, 7 November 2008.

North Dakota farmers want to grow hemp with THC levels so low you'd have to toke an entire acre to get a buzz, but the DEA says no way in a truly imbecilic decision that reflects the slippery slope thinking we've become attached to in this lengthy and rather useless drug war.

Gotta love America, where a drop of blood makes you a black man and a fraction of THC makes you an illegal crop. This is a nation of mutts, as Obama describes himself. We should get over such nonsense.

Comments

[RobQ]

America’s drug paranoia seems to have given us the largest prison population in the world. Now a new problem is at our doorstep. Newsweek has called Juarez America's Waziristan ... a lawless frontier financed by drug money.

The historical analog is compelling. Prohibition in the 1920s brought organized crime to new heights. Prohibition has now morphed into the war-on-drugs mania & organized crime is still with us.

The logic seems to have been this: With drugs, you have either a huge health care problem or a huge law enforcement problem, and the latter is the more preferable. It will probably fall to other countries, like Switzerland and the Netherlands, to sort this out.

Sad. Very sad.

[le0pard13]

Our War on Drugs has been about as effective as our blockade on Cuba (and that stopped Castro so well...). I readily agree with RobQ that we have a thriving prison system mainly due to our WoD, and that's not a very good metric to measure it by. We even prohibit/limit medical research with regard Marijuana--something Israel and Canada have been doing. Reminds me of the Einstein quote:

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

[Michael]

A favorite fantasy author of mine (David Eddings) had a saying in one of his books: Only a fool starts a war on two fronts, only a madman starts one on three. But that's precisely what we've done.

We have the War on Terror in Afghanistan. We have the War on The Risk of a Failed State in The Middle of the World's Oil Supply in Iraq. And we have the War on Drugs, which undermines our interests in several countries, makes the WoT harder to fight and threatens to give us a third shooting front if Mexico gets much worse. All this without a mad emperor . . .

[Matt Osborne]

Because pot is such a dangerous drug compared to, say, Vytorin.

[Thebastidge]

Then there's the struggle to control opium in Afghanistan. I think we should buy it all up. Couldn't really turn out worse than tangos using it to finance their own operations.