Best selling author, TV travel guru and NORML Advisory Board member Rick Steves continues to advance in both mainstream print and radio the common sense notion that cannabis prohibition does not work at all well and that Europe is doing a better job with overall drug policy because most of their governments don’t harass and arrest cannabis consumers—and they incarcerate hardly any offenders.

Compare that to the United States where a consumer is arrested every 38 seconds on cannabis-related charges (830,000 cannabis arrests in 2006), and, as of 2004, there were over 69,000 ‘offenders’ in jail or prison.

Update: Continued kudos in the New York Times today for Steves’ honesty and foresight regarding the urgent need for America to re-evaluate federal cannabis policies.