Christopher Hitchens - On 'the war on d**' lyrics

I'm very heartened to find that in spite of all the incessant, ridiculous, hateful, self-evidently contradictory propaganda about "the war on d**" that when American voters are asked about it it shows this propaganda has had no effect. It really cheers me up to think that. It restores ones faith in the thinking voter. I think decriminalization of d** is long long overdue, it will be looked back on when it is done as: "What was all that about? How did we let Richard Nixon declare a "war on d**" and ruin so much of our society, throw away so many of our liberties, incarcerate so many innocent people, deny ourselves - in the case of marijuana - so many potential remedies. How did we ever let this prohibition go as far as it has gone?" I would add to what David Frum says that not just would there be a great decline in the murder rate - because I'm not threatened physically at all if someone in my building or on my block wants to put a substance into their system, which is their right and it's none of the governments business, that doesn't threaten me at all. What does threaten me is people who will shoot at each other in the street for the right to sell him that stuff if it's illegal. The second thing - terrible consequence that arrives from that is of course tremendous corruption. Whole police departments have been lost to the drug trade and I think it won't be long before there will be judges too. It'll be much much worse than Chicago in the '20s and it already is pretty bad. I think that's the moment probably at which decriminalization will be considered forceably by the authorities, they'll have to do something about it but I think it's appalling one should have to wait that long.