Marijuana prohibition, the backbone of the drug war, is one of the great frauds of the past 70 years. If journalists and editors confronted the hypocrisy that sustains this policy with even a shred of courage, there is simply no way it could stand the light of day. Another little detail that the media missed when reporting the Supreme Court decision is that Clarence Thomas, who wrote the brutal opinion of the court, is the one justice who admits having smoked marijuana, when he was at Yale Law School. In asking if marijuana can treat the side-effects of bad journalism, Hartmann touches upon the root cause of America's marijuana laws. If health outcomes determined drug laws instead of cultural norms, marijuana would be legal.
Alcohol poisoning kills thousands annually.
Tobacco is one of the most addictive substances known to man. Marijuana is not physically addictive and has never been shown to cause an overdose death. The first marijuana laws were a racist reaction to Mexican laborers' taking jobs from whites during the early 1900s, passed in large part due to newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst's yellow journalism. These days, marijuana is confused with '60s counterculture by those who would like to turn the clock back to the '50s. This intergenerational culture war does far more harm than marijuana.