John Tierney:

I recommend a couple of articles chronicling the unintended consequences of the war on drugs. One, by Ethan Nadelmann, is a global look at the damage done by prohibitionist policies. The other, by Radley Balko, is a look at a doctor convicted for prescribing opioids — and this case is in some ways more troubling than the Hurwitz case that I’ve been writing about.

Dr. Nadelmann’s article is the cover story of Foreign Policy magazine, which summarizes the article’s findings with large lettters on the cover: “Legalize It: Why It’s Time to Just Say No to Prohibition.” Dr. Nadelmann, the executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, shows how America has exported its preoccupation with drugs to the rest of the world, harming other countries and financing terrorists that pose a threat to America. (Not that this narco-financed threat seems to matter much in Washington. After 9/11, Americans were told that we had to revise our assumptions about the world — and about little things like civil liberties — but the drug prohibitionists in Washington don’t seem to have revised their thinking one whit.)