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Prominent politicians from Virginia to California — including Sen. Jim Webb and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger — have begun to discuss the merits of legalizing and taxing marijuana. And most striking of all, New York — the state that pioneered the use of prison cells for drug addicts — has repealed its repressive Rockefeller drug laws, replacing the nation's harshest sentences with a progressive approach to treatment. "We put a stop to 35 years of bad policy," Gov. David Paterson tells Rolling Stone.
The pace of change has shocked even the most optimistic drug-reform advocates.
"I could never have predicted the way things have opened up in the last four months," says
Ethan Nadelmann, the founder and executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance.
"We haven't had an open and honest conversation about drugs like this on a national level since the 1970s."
Political pressure to end the War on Drugs is building in surprising quarters. In recent months, three distinct rationales have converged to convince a growing number of politicians — including many on the center-right — to seriously consider the benefits of legalizing marijuana.
Legalization is also backed by
a growing number of veteran drug warriors. "The War on Drugs is a constantly expanding and self-perpetuating policy disaster," says Jack Cole, a former undercover narcotics agent who now serves as president of a group called
Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, which includes hundreds of former drug agents, police officers and judges. "If all drugs were legal and regulated we could have exactly the same demand for drugs in the U.S., but there wouldn't be any killings. Mexico's 7,500 deaths since the beginning of last year — all those murders just wouldn't exist."
"There's an urgent need to end this mistaken drug war," says Kevin Zeese, head of Common Sense for Drug Policy.
"This is just an example of an administration that says one thing and doe$ another."
