Steve Cohen: “Sunday's New York Times editorial page--the entire page, a very unusual circumstance--was dedicated to ending our crazy…”

“Sunday's New York Times editorial page--the entire page, a very unusual circumstance--was dedicated to ending our crazy and unsuccessful and expensive war on marijuana, emphasizing that the war on marijuana costs us much money in prosecuting and also ruins people's lives. It costs us more than it protects, and it has a disparate impact on African Americans and minorities, as they are much more likely to be arrested, have a scarlet M on their chest for the rest of their lives, denying them public housing, scholarships, and often jobs. It is time we left the situation to the States, like we did with alcohol, the last prohibition we had in this country, and let the States make these decisions, as Colorado and Washington have, the laboratories of democracy. Let's make sense of our drug policies and drug laws and not have marijuana and heroin in the same class. ____________________”