Esquire Magazine has an interesting piece with the exciting (for me, at least) title of A Radical Solution to End the Drug War: Legalize Everything:

One cop straight out of The Wire crunches the numbers with Esquire.com's political columnist to discover that America's prohibition of narcotics may be costing more lives than Mexico's -- and nearly enough dollars for universal health care. So why not repeal our drug laws? Because cops are making money off them, too.

What fascinates me the most right now is what appears to be a new trend of anti-legalization snarkiness coming from pro-Obama people. Had the same Esquire piece come out during Bush's tenure, reaction against it would have been been expected from Republican and conservative circles.

I guess it shouldn't surprise me to see that with a new administration, new standard bearers and new flak catchers are emerging. Now that liberals are running the drug war, the task falls on liberals to defend it, and Mark Kleiman is among those who has stepped up to the plate.

Esquire publishes yet another drug-leglization screed. Whoever does press relations for Law Enforcement Against Prohibition deserves a bonus.

Demolition of the argument (if you can call it that) is left as an exercise for the reader. A few hints, just to get you started [...]

Parenthetically, (and this is old stuff), I think it is patently evil to imprison people for self harm. Moreover, if abortion and "sodomy" cannot constitutionally be made crimes, on what basis can ingestion of substances? But this is off topic, and I realize that it is unreasonable to expect consistency from the state.

I learned about Kleiman's snarky dismissal of the Esquire piece from Pete at Drug WarRant, who concludes,

Legalization is on the table. It is a point of discussion. It cannot be ignored or merely pushed off as so politically impractical to negate consideration. Those who would lead policy will have to be willing to have serious discussion about it, or they'll be left behind.

Bear in mind that when Bush was president, Kleiman was in favor of legalizing personal use and growing of marijuana:

Allow use of cannabis, and growing for personal use or gratis distribution. Forbid commercial activity.

But policy is policy, and liberal policies require liberal defenses by liberal public policy experts. When Obama's new Drug Czar Gil Kerlikowske was appointed, Kleiman sang his praises as a "respected voice on gun and drug policy," and as a "welcome change."

"Respected" is one of those words which depends on who does the respecting. The man's long record of support for gun control (documented here by Dave Kopel) would alone do much to endear him to Obama supporters.

But as this report makes clear, Kerlikowske is anything but pro-legalization.

"Legalization is not in the president's vocabulary, and it's not in mine," [Kerlikowske] said.

Kerlikowske said he can understand why legislators are talking about taxing marijuana cultivation to help cash-strapped government agencies in California. But the federal government views marijuana as a harmful and addictive drug, he said.

"Marijuana is dangerous and has no medicinal benefit," Kerlikowske said in downtown Fresno while discussing Operation SOS -- Save Our Sierra -- a multiagency effort to eradicate marijuana in eastern Fresno County.

Hey, at least they didn't put him in charge of guns. God spare us from the policy people. But someone has to do it, right? I'm just curious: how many libertarians are interested in the field of public policy? Are they turned off by the field? Do public policy schools screen them out? Does anyone know?

Incidentally, the federal government has admitted that 98% of the eradicated marijuana is not cultivated, but is simply wild "ditchweed" -- with little or no psychoactive properties.

According to the data, available online at: albany.edu/sourcebook/pdf/t4382005.pdf of the estimated 223 million marijuana plants destroyed by law enforcement in 2005, approximately 219 million were classified as "ditchweed," a term the agency uses to define "wild, scattered marijuana plants [with] no evidence of planting, fertilizing, or tending." Unlike cultivated marijuana, feral hemp contains virtually no detectable levels of THC, the psychoactive component in cannabis, and does not contribute to the black market marijuana trade.

Previous DEA reports have indicated that between 98 and 99 percent of all the marijuana plants eradicated by US law enforcement is ditchweed.

What I can't quite grasp is the notion that self harm should be aggravated by the additional (and very serious) harm of criminal punishment in the form of imprisonment. I realize the theory is that harm punishes harm, and harm deters harm, and I can understand it if the goal is to punish or deter harm to others. In that respect, I could even understand the Islamic idea that cutting off the hands of thieves deters theft. But prison for drugs is like cutting the arm off a man for cutting off his own hand. Whipping a masochist for having had himself whipped. Having a man raped because he engaged in "sodomy," or raping a woman for having had unlawful intercourse. It's worse than an eye for an eye, as it's a perversion of the doctrine, and I have long wished that conservatives would stop defending it.

So I don't know whether I should be glad to see liberals stepping up to the plate, or whether I should worry about a growing statist consensus.