From the cato-at-liberty blog:

This just in… A federal court in Argentina has decriminalized the personal consumption of drugs in that country. According to the court’s ruling, punishing drug users only “creates an avalanche of cases targeting consumers without climbing up in the ladder of [drug] trafficking.”

Last month at a UN meeting in Vienna, Argentina’s Minister of Justice, Aníbal Fernández, said that the policy of punishing drug consumers was a “total failure.”

Thanks to NORML Advisory Board member David Boaz for the tip.

Born the same year in 1970, Earth Day and NORML have grown up side-by-side. Today, millions of Americans will celebrate and be mindful of the basic message of Earth Day: Living in harmony with nature.

Frustratingly, NORML recently discovered through a tip from a supporter and a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) that an anti-drug group based in Florida called Drug Free America Foundation (DFAF) in their zeal against anything having to do with cannabis harass major corporations and retailers to stop marketing all products that are made of hemp, books that educate about the plant and even CDs from musical artists that dare mention the word ‘hemp’.

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Most of New York City’s millions of citizens, notably elected policymakers and the media from New York City, have no blooming idea that The Big Apple nearly tops the nation’s metropolitan areas in both per capita arrest rates for marijuana and racial disparity in enforcing cannabis prohibition laws. In supposedly ‘liberal’ and ‘tolerant’ NYC for every white person arrested, nine minorities are arrested.

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NORML’s letter to the editor of New York Times, April 15, 2008:

The April 15, 2008 article ‘Marijuana Smokers Were Poisoned With Lead In Leipzig’ is informative and perfectly underscores the need to legally control cannabis via regulation and taxation, rather than failed prohibition policies.

Seeking even higher profits in the already lucrative, prohibition-fueled business of cannabis distribution, untaxed and unregulated cannabis sellers in Leipzig Germany apparently added lead particles to their bags of cannabis to increase the product’s weight and value. This is hardly a surprise to observers of prohibition economics.

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With all the bleak talk in America about the economy, including record fuel and medicine prices, one would think that elected policy makers and mainstream media would gravitate towards an obvious storyline on this day, April 15—America’s dreaded Tax Day—and that is the tens of millions of Americans who’d happily trade in the government-imposed label of ‘criminal’ for ‘sales taxpayer’.

Who am I referring too? Cannabis consumers like me, and maybe you as well. In fact, tens of millions of American cannabis consumers!

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