The Nation talks up "Dope and Change" and explains "Why It’s Always Been Time to Legalize Marijuana"

If magazine covers serve as a marker of some kind of tipping point, then November 2013 should be marked as the month when these covers went to pot.   As noted in this prior post, the November 2013 issue of Reason magazine has lots of terrific coverage of modern marijuana realities and a lengthy cover story titled "Pot Goes Legit."  Now I see that the November 18, 2013 issue of The Nation is covering marijuana mania with a cover picture of President Obama's high-school "Choom Gang" under the headline "Dope and Change" and this editorial headlined "Why It’s Always Been Time to Legalize Marijuana."  Here is how the editorial gets started:

“Marijuana is indeed a gateway drug,” quips Sanho Tree of the Institute for Policy Studies. “It’s a gateway drug to the Oval Office!” Indeed. From Bill Clinton’s “I didn’t inhale it” through George W. Bush’s “I was young and foolish” to Barack Obama’s teen years in the Choom Gang (“I inhaled frequently—that was the point”), the last three presidents have more or less owned up to breaking America’s drug laws.

All of them were elected. Then re-elected.

This raises obvious questions: If Clinton, Bush and Obama, ex–pot smokers all, were deemed responsible enough to lead the world’s most powerful nation, largest economy and strongest military (with thousands of nukes), why are we still arresting young men and women — especially young African-Americans and Latinos — for doing what these men did? Why do countless people languish behind bars for nonviolent drug crimes? And why is pot still classified as a dangerous drug?

This is especially astonishing when you consider that almost half of all Americans — myself included — admit to having at least tried pot. As a parent who has had the substance use-and-abuse talks with my 22-year-old daughter, I’ve had a hard time explaining why she can freely purchase cigarettes, which can certainly kill her, but not marijuana, which will surely not.

When the Eighteenth Amendment banned alcohol in 1920, it took thirteen years to admit failure and enact the Twenty-first, which ended Prohibition. By contrast, it has now been almost eighty years since the Federal Bureau of Narcotics launched the “reefer madness” era. The ensuing decades have been a debacle, from Nixon’s “war on drugs” to the creation, by Joe Biden, of a national “drug czar.”

So much failure. So many lives ruined. So much time wasted. Enough. It’s time to end pot prohibition.  It’s time to legalize marijuana.

In addition to this editorial, The Nation has in both its print edition and on-line an extraordinary amount of insightful commentary about modern marijuana realities past, present and future. Here are links to all the coverage, cut and pasted straight from the end of the editorial:

Also In This Issue

Mike Riggs: “Obama’s War on Pot”

Carl L. Hart: “Pot Reform’s Race Problem”

Harry Levine: “The Scandal of Racist Marijuana Possession Arrests—and Why We Must Stop Them”

Martin A. Lee: “Let a Thousand Flowers Bloom: The Populist Politics of Cannabis Reform”

Martin A. Lee: “The Marijuana Miracle: Why a Single Compound in Cannabis May Revolutionize Modern Medicine”

Kristen Gwynne: “Can Medical Marijuana Survive in Washington State?”

Atossa Araxia Abrahamian: “Baking Bad: A Potted History of High Times”

Various Contributors: “The Drug War Touched My Life: Why I’m Fighting Back”

And only online…

J. Hoberman: “The Cineaste’s Guide to Watching Movies While Stoned”

Harmon Leon: “Pot Block! Trapped in the Marijuana Rescheduling Maze”

Seth Zuckerman: “Is Pot-Growing Bad for the Environment?”