If old white men feel maligned, they should take their own advice to minorities.

[Comrade Grumpy]

211. Glad to see you mention an actual issue. The war on drugs is the new Jim Crow...

...if I may lift a phrase from Michelle Alexander.

A lot of us have been working on this issue for a long time. And, finally, some progress is being made. Obama got the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 passed that reduced--but didn't eliminate--the crack/powder sentencing disparity. A policy screamingly racist in its results, even if you're willing to give the people who passed it the benefit of the doubt. There's more sentencing reform legislation in the pipe, and Obama and Holder are practically begging drug war prisoners (mainly black) to apply for clemency.

I think it was you who made a crack about all those white Libertarian drug legalizers who just want to smoke pot (and if it wasn't, this isn't about you). There are some folks like that--the drug reform movement cuts across ideological lines--but there are a whole lot more who are involved in this issue for social and racial justice reasons. And a whole bunch of them are white, and increasingly old.

And here's something to think about regarding those white pot heads: I suspect that for many of them, their persecution for smoking pot was the first thing that opened their eyes to the injustices of the criminal justice system. Once you've been fucked over by the system, it may make you somewhat more likely to have to some empathy and sympathy for other people being fucked over by the system.

If you want to work to end the racially discriminatory war on drugs, I'm with you. I'm not the enemy. And neither are the other people you're managing to piss off with your divisive posts. I gotta give it to you, though: In that thread started in response to your stuff yesterday, you managed to get a lot of people to post that I haven't seen for awhile. Of course, none of them are very happy with you.