Author Archives: Zach

So I have to admit that I feel a huge stoner for writing this, but it’s an important matter of public policy in a country that leads the world in incarceration.  Over 20% of our prisoners are costing us $35k a year for victimless drug crimes, and an untold number are serving time for crimes — property or violent — tangentially related drugs whether raising money to buy drugs or fighting over turf on which to sell drugs.  After a century of failure its time (puff, cough, puff) to rethink the almost-world-wide prohibition of drugs.  I’ve long felt that drug prohibition – and I’m not talking only about the pot that flows as freely through my East Quad home as bonus money at a failed bank, but also heroin, crack, meth and all sorts of things a little white priss like me has never seen outside of poorly done newspaper illustrations – was a failure and ought to be ended.  I’ve also long not dared to speak it, lest I be lumped in with the sorts of long-haired, unwashed Ron Paul groupies that I want so desperatly for Ann Arbor liberals like myself not to be.  But an article from The Economist, a bastion of the respectable center-right consensus, has given me the proverbial kick-in-the-ass I needed to come out of the closet in favor of legalization. (more…)