Legal Pot Could Be Contagious: Colorado and Washington Show Us the Way Out of the Senseless War on Marijuana

Legal Pot Could Be Contagious: Colorado and Washington Show Us the Way Out of the Senseless War on Marijuana

Shortly before the House of Representatives approved a federal ban on marijuana in 1937, the Republican minority leader, Bertrand Snell of New York, confessed, "I do not know anything about the bill." The Democratic majority leader, Sam Rayburn of Texas, educated him. "It has something to do with something that is called marihuana," Rayburn said. "I believe it is a narcotic of some kind."

Seventy-five years, millions of arrests and billions of dollars later, we are still living with the consequences of that ignorant, ill-considered decision, which nationalized a policy that punishes peaceful people and squanders taxpayer money in a blind vendetta...