Hopefully the public will see this for what it is: a desparate self-preservatory attempt to protect one’s job.

A few years back, when the Olympic Torch Ceremony was passing through Juneau, then high school senior Joe Frederick, in a juvenille prank, held up a giant banner that read “Bong Hits for Jesus.” The school suspended him for 10 days. Frederick brought the school board to court–and won–on the grounds that his free speech was violated (he was neither on school grounds when holding the sign, nor caused a disruption). The school board is now pushing for the case to be reviewed in Supreme Court (at a sizable expense to local taxpayers) and Lewinsky scandal lawyer Kenneth Starr has become involved.

As writer Beth Bragg points out in her article (available here), if the school board sincerely believes that Frederick’s message should be censored on the grounds that it promotes dangerous drug use, then the best thing they should do is drop the case. Because now, the infamous phrase has now become a household joke. And so has the Juneau School Board.

Thanks to The Media Awareness Project for the link.

I got this info (as well as a chuckle from an anecdote about a Dutch woman who never had any desire to try marijuana until she visited the United States) from an OP-ED piece in the St. Petersburg Times.

So much for the executive branch of government not involving itself in legislative affairs (the DEA’s stance has always been that it “just enforces the laws”). The DEA claims that the 10 grand is not from public tax revenue but, in any case, an independent investigation should be conducted, to say the least. Once again, one wonders what motivates the committment to something that is such an abject failure.

Source (from Boulder’s “Daily Camera”)

John Walters (head of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy), of course, questioned the findings on the grounds that determining a direct relationship between ad exposure and outcomes is virtually impossible (I’m not even sure what this means).

The question, as always, is what motivates this sort of grasping at straws. Is it really only the desire to save face and to maintain funding? Is that it? Simple pride is behind this waste? The numbers are right there; the ads do not work. None of the auditors are claiming that we should legalize drugs as a result of this, just that we should drop the ads. Why is that met with such reluctance? Pure irrationality.

Thanks to Media Awareness Project for the story (which was originally published in Florida’s Brandeton Herald).

This line sums up Tristam’s captivating article (which was brought to my attention by Pete Guthier at Drug War Rant). The article traces the continual failure of the War on Drugs to the typically-American inability to admit defeat. In most contexts, of course, this is obviously a positive feature of the American psyche, but we are now certainly faced with a situation that desperately calls for the collective re-evaluation of our efforts. Yet, we are reluctant to even talk about it. Hopefully this November’s legislative initiatives in Nevada and Colorado will, even if they don’t pass, at least generate nationwide discussion.

Another question, here, however is whether or not the petition itself is legit. The first answer that suggests itself is an emphatic “NO!”, but several recent developments have me wondering. Come this November’s Election Day, voters in Nevada, will have to decide on whether or not to let a “tax and regulate” marijuana policy become law. The biggest supporters of this petition, however, are Nevada’s Republican party big-wigs. Reports out of Philadelphia claim that a similar conservative-backed movement is taking place there as well. At a glance, this seems crazy–but we must remember that, traditionally, Republicanism is not as much rooted in the social conservatism that we see today but in free market liberalism that is entirely conducive to legalizing drug use. One wonders if there is really anything beyond cross-generational hatred of ‘long-hairs’ that has kept Republicans off the mark here for so long, especially given the fact that the financial stakes are so high.

Whether or not the petition is real, of course, is beside the point. The voter registration trick is flat-out reprehensible. But maybe we should think twice about what sorts of politicians we are trying to persuade. The conservative right may be an untapped resource in the fight against prohibition.

Of course, the Assistant Prosecutor from Ocean County, Terrence Farley, says the bill is a veiled attempt to legalize drugs–a typically circular argument, since the legalization of a drug is precisely what is at issue.

Via WCBS 880.

Finally, I’ve come across some great pictures from inside the exhibit, courtesy of Mark Draughn of the Windy Pundit. We’ve all heard about the highly offensive display of wreckage from the World Trade Center and from the Pentagon, but I didn’t realize how many other aspects of the exhibit are just plan silly. It opens, for example, with a heart-wrenching picture of a car wreck in which a family died and the driver was on several drugs. But how does this evil make drugs any different from alcohol?

Another is a life-size model of a Drug Den, complete with peeling wallpaper so that you will Know Your Dope Fiend. Lastly, there is an insulting to my intelligence poster of several DEA agents, all lined up like action heroes. The certainly un-staged picture is also, of course, more than sufficiently representative of several cultures.

The DEA really has embarrassed themselves here.