Marijuana Has Won The War On Drugs

At least when it comes to marijuana, the war on drugs is over.

Two states have passed marijuana legalization laws that fly in the face of national drug policy.

Polling on the issue shows a rejection of prohibition. The opinions of law enforcement commanders has begun to shift.

For some who want to cut the budget, the drug war is looking like a good place to start.

Now, for the first time, when a marijuana lobbyist calls a member of Congress, they get asked for money, not hung up on,Allen St. Pierre, the executive director of NORMLtold Business Insider. And, as St. Pierre was proud to point out, the man in the White House personally invented a new way to smoke marijuana in high school.

Things are changing.

In February, Obama's "drug czar" Gil Kerlikowski, the d irector of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, admitted several failures on the part of the administration when it came to the War on Drugs.

"You can't arrest your way out of this problem," he said to Macleans, a Canadian magazine," The administration has not done a particularly good job of, one, talking about marijuana as a public health issue,and number two, talking about what can be done and where we should be headed on our drug policy."

Kerlikowski is far from the first drug warrior to admit defeat.

Stephen Downing, a former Deputy Chief of the LAPD, was the director of the narcotics division when Richard Nixon declared the War on Drugs, and personally helped set up the DEA infrastructure.

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Marijuana Has Won The War On Drugs