by Robert Scheer

About the author: Robert Scheer is a contributing editor for the Los Angeles Times newspaper.

If there is one stunning bit of stupidity that instantly garners bipartisan support, it’s the failed war on drugs. Virtually all politicians march in lock-step to do battle with unmitigated fervor against each and every banned drug as if they were all created equal in destructive potency and anti-social impulse.

Nowhere is the simplistic arrogance that underwrites national drug policy more blatant than in the continual denigration of voters in the states that dare dissent from official policy. In 1996, it was the electorate of California and Arizona that begged to differ and, by voting in favor of the limited legalized use of medical marijuana, incurred the blistering wrath of the anti-drug crusaders.

To hear the uproar in...