I have had my differences with Ethan Nadelmann director of the Drug Policy Alliance (DPA) in the past. Sometimes, it seems to me that he is building a kinder gentler war staffed by a drug treatment bureaucracy with a stake in its continuance. I agree with people like Thomas Szasz and Jeff Schaler that the drug reform movement’s current emphasis on medical marijuana smacks of the therapeutic state.

However, I do not believe that this concentration on marijuana as a medicine is as problematic as they do, because medical marijuana will not remain the foremost issue for very much longer. I offer this very persuasive article by Dr. Nadelmann published in the National Review along with this ad, which the DPA ran in the New York Sun during the GOP convention, to support my belief.

If the discussion moves to decriminalization and that is achieved then the medical issue is mute. If you believe tomatoes are healthy you do not need a doctor’s permission to grow and eat them. Yes, the laws will remain on the books but there will be little incentive to enforce them. They will go the way of, say, laws against adultery.