Today is the 75th anniversary of the nation’s repealing the alcohol prohibition amendment, says Ethan Nadelmann of the Drug Policy Alliance. Nadelmann makes the argument in the Wall Street Journal to end drug prohibition today: “500,000 people incarcerated in U.S. prisons and jails for nonviolent drug-law violations; 1.8 million drug arrests last year; tens of billions of taxpayer dollars expended annually to fund a drug war that 76% of Americans say has failed; millions now marked for life as former drug felons; many thousands dying each year from drug overdoses that have more to do with prohibitionist policies than the drugs themselves.”
Nadelmann doubts that president-elect Barack Obama will mark the prohibition repeal anniversary. Nadelmann does not “expect him to do much to reform the nation’s drug laws apart from making good on a few of the commitments he made during the campaign: repealing the harshest drug sentences, removing federal bans on funding needle-exchange programs to reduce AIDS, giving medical marijuana a fair chance to prove itself, and supporting treatment alternatives for low-level drug offenders.”
Link: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122843683581681375.html