Whither the Drug War?

Mike Crowley asks whether Barack Obama will offer any “substantial” change to America’s drug policy. There’s an easy, short answer to that: No.

At least, during the campaign Obama offered little reason to hope that he’d adopt a saner drugs policy. Now, true, that was just the campaign, but his website suggested that there’d be little fresh thinking on, say, Plan Colombia and, of course, Joe Biden was the inspiration for the first “Drugs Tsar” in the first place. More to the point, ending the “War on Drugs” would use up valuable political capital that Obama most probably has better, more urgent uses for. Still, to be fair, he hasn’t disappointed us on this, yet and so, for the time being at least, hope breathes…