"The fact is, the marijuana law in the U.S. is a big lie. It's racist and classist. White rich people can smoke marijuana with impunity and poor black people get a record, can't get education, can't get a loan, and all of sudden go into a life of desperation and become hardened criminals. Why? Because we've got a racist law based on lies about marijuana.
There's 80,000 people in jail today for marijuana. We arrested 800,000 people in the last 12 months on marijuana. Even in my rich little white suburban community of Edmonds, Wash., 25 percent of police action is marijuana-related. Everybody knows it's silly. I'm not saying I'm pro-drug. I'm just saying it's parallel to alcohol prohibition. When they rescinded the laws against alcohol, nobody said booze is good, they just said it was stupid to make it a crime, that you're creating organized crime and people are dying," - Rick Steves, broadcaster and travel guru.
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http://www.drugpolicy.org/homepage.cfm. I heard about this organization on the Colbert Report, and they have some great policy arguments for decriminalization. There's also a huge discrepancy in sentencing for crack and powder cocaine that is nothing but racist in practice. The drug war is a serious disgrace to this country. It costs billions, incentivizes organized crime, and disproportionately targets communities that already have it hard enough.
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