What Was the Principal Smoking?

When the "war on drugs" gets to be so "over the top" that the Heritage Foundation's "Townhall.com" distributes an editorial that not only condemns the police for an ill-considered raid on a high school, but mentions the ACLU as if it is doing something positive.... Maybe the groundwork is in place to start shifting toward a rational (dare I say "sane") drug policy?

The American Civil Liberties Union has said the raid was illegal, and the South Carolina State Law Enforcement Division is investigating. In the meantime, McCrackin might consider taking some R&R, and the Goose Creek Police Department might goose-step on over to Tikrit. I hear our special-ops guys could use some backup.

The author, Kathleen Parker, also observes,

I don't mean to minimize the danger of drugs in our culture, and I don't blame school officials for taking the problem seriously. [Principal] McCrackin surely had a legitimate duty to try to stop illicit commerce on his watch.

But scaring young people to death, pointing pistols in their faces, handcuffing them for failing to respond quickly enough defines the phrase "over the top." McCrackin says he didn't know police would draw their guns - and police were just doing their jobs - so who's to blame? Surely someone.

British columnist Johann Hari recently wrote an editorial for the London Independent, " Conclusive proof that prohibition of drugs can never work", in which he details the devastation inflicted on Central American farmers as part of the "war on drugs" and observes,

Thirty years after Richard Nixon launched the "War on Drugs", heroin and cocaine have never been easier to buy on British and American streets.

One of Mr. Hari's past writings on the subject suggests that it is unlikely that we will soon see his pieces distributed via townhall.com - but darn it, I wish politicians on both sides of the political fence would wake up to the realities, catastrophes, and failures of the so-called "drug war".

When, despite our expense of billions upon billions of dollars in interdiction, prosecution, and quasi-warfare in nations like Colombia doesn't change (or perhaps creates) a reality where it is typically easier for high school kids to buy illicit drugs than to buy alcohol, and where drug quality continues to rise even while prices remain stable or fall, it should be patent to everybody that the failed policies of the past three decades must be changed.

I say this not as somebody who has any desire to obtain or use illegal drugs - I don't - but as somebody who has seen a lot of lives wasted (and a surprising amount of institutional corruption) as a result of this "war", and who resents having his tax money wasted - no, make that frittered - in the name of this "war". Can we have some sanity, please?

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