Laughing with a mouth of blood

“[B]y removing finite police resources from safety and security operations and instead focusing them on punishing pot use, [local, state, and federal governments have put us all at risk]… even as the public’s support for that war precipitously declines. …

At the federal level, this hostility to public opinion is most overt. The Obama administration has ignored the president’s campaign pledges and initiated a new round of marijuana raids at the very moment Gallup finds that a majority of Americans support the effort to fully legalize pot. Additionally, at the same time the administration is decrying budget deficits, the White House is pushing for a big increase in drug war funding, specifically preserving funding formulas that send far more money to the war’s militaristic endeavors (interdiction, law enforcement activities, etc.) than to more humane harm-reduction and treatment programs.

Put it all together and we see that the ascendant concept of an “era of persistent conflict” (read: permanent war) is not limited to our foreign occupations. Right here at home, governments at every level are waging a never-ending war without regard for — and often in brazen defiance of — what their constituents want.