Motus Mentis

When President Obama won election last fall, many of us thought that his victory might lead, at long last, to a re-evaluation of our nation’s endless, obsessive, futile, puritanical and ruinously costly “war on drugs”. Alas, it appears that this insane policy, which perpetuates the enormous black market and resulting drug-cartel violence that have effectively turned Mexico into a failed state, is not going anywhere soon; we see that Mr. Obama has now announced his intention to “crack down on drug use in our cities and towns.”

The naive opinions of well-intentioned pundits notwithstanding, this is an enormously stubborn, paternalistic and foolish attitude, and I am deeply disappointed in Mr. Obama for publicly endorsing it: as the Harvard economist Jeffery Miron argued in this cogent essay, it is past time for the “war on drugs” to end. I hope Mr. Obama comes to his senses; he will probably need some prodding.