California Marijuana Rules Signal End of Prohibition: New at Reason

California’s marijuana rules are going to be heavy-handed, but an end to prohibition is coming.

Steven Greenhut writes:

It’s an old cliché, but one doesn’t find beer distributors gunning each other down in the town square in battles over market turf. Whisky distillers don’t dump pollutants in streams and rivers—and bars and restaurants that serve cocktails tend to be safe places that follow modern building codes. People rarely go blind drinking hooch that some disreputable “distiller” made in a bathtub.

Alcoholism causes terrible problems, but since the end of Prohibition Americans have made their peace with booze. It’s been harder convincing policy makers to take a similar approach with marijuana, even though the War on Drugs has left a trail of destruction that’s as troubling as the ill it seeks to combat. Conservative icon William F. Buckley warned years ago about the toll that war would take on civil liberties and budgets, but few heeded his warnings. When will politicians learn?

Fortunately, voters are learning that the relatively benign drug of marijuana is best dealt with using a tax-and-regulatory approach rather than SWAT teams and prosecutions. The federal government is behind the times, of course, with Attorney General Jeff Sessions blathering about weed in a way that would make members of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union proud, if there were indeed still members of that group.

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