'We Have a Co-Responsibility'

Attorney General Eric Holder said that the United States should reinstitute the Clinton-era "assault weapons" ban on the sale of arbitrarily selected semiautomatic guns in order (at least in fantasy land) to reduce the violence of Mexican drug gangs.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton added, "I feel very strongly we have a co-responsibility. Our insatiable demand for illegal drugs fuels the drug trade. Our inability to prevent weapons from being illegally smuggled across the border to arm these criminals causes the deaths of police officers, soldiers and civilians."

Clinton is right about one thing: the United States does "have a co-responsibility" for drug-related Mexican violence. The United States wages a war on drugs at home and abroad while encouraging the Mexican government to follow suit, a policy primarily responsible for drug-related violence.

We know perfectly well how to end drug-trade-related violence both in Mexico and in the United States. End the war on drugs. But few politicians have the courage or integrity to state this simple fact, at least in public.

This is yet another example of how drug prohibition promotes gun prohibition, a topic I discussed in 2000 (though I no longer endorse the Libertarians).

Gun-rights advocates who endorse drug prohibition act as destroyers of their own cause.

Tvert Spins Parties at Governor's Mansion

So Bill Ritter -- that's Governor Ritter, former District Attorney of Denver -- sanctioned crazy parties at the governor's mansion. At first I wondered why this is news. (God knows I've done worse, back when I was young and dumb.) I wish Ritter would throw more parties and sign fewer bills. But leave it to Mason Tvert of SAFER, a group advocating legal marijuana, to spin the story into something interesting.

As The Denver Post reports:

Marijuana supporters want to ask the governor why his young son can have a drinking party inside the governor's mansion while other citizens can't smoke marijuana inside their own homes without the fear of prosecution.

Mason Tvert, who spearheaded the largely symbolic victory in 2005 when Denver voters legalized possession of one ounce or less of marijuana, held a press conference [May 16] outside the mansion at East Eighth Avenue and Logan Street, the same day it was reported in the Denver Post that August Ritter III has been hosting keg parties in the mansion.

Tvert asks a fair question. Yet Ritter, who has admitted to smoking marijuana, has discussed lighter sentences for drug users but never has wavered from his prohibitionist stance.

Everwood

Based on a friend's recommendation, my wife and I rented a disk from the first season of the television serious Everwood, and we liked it so much we purchased the set. The title is based on the name of the fictitious Colorado town where the story develops. The premise is that a talented New York doctor -- among the finest brain surgeons in the world -- loses his wife and, in his grief, resettles his family (he has a young daughter and teenage boy) in Everwood, a town in the mountains a tolerable drive away from Denver.

The central character of the show, Dr. Andrew Brown, portrayed by a wonderful Treat Williams, is a glowing figure. Obviously he suffers from the loss of his wife, and he fights with his son and faces various other problems. But he reveals magnificent force of character and an underlying benevolence. The writing of the show is both sweet and moving, despite a few oblique religious themes and the fact that Brown works without compensation for reasons that are not entirely convincing.

The show treads lightly into politics, and it does so with particular poignancy in the twelfth episode of the first season. When an elderly florist dies, the town discovers that she was growing marijuana in the back room. A debate about medical marijuana erupts. Even though the setting of the debate is artificial -- the town government holds a public meeting to decide the fate of the florist's marijuana, which is not how things work in real-world Colorado -- the discussion is thoughtful and rounded. Ultimately the show leans toward toleration. Yet none of this seems like a political sermon; it is part of a thoughtful story that contains another significant plot development. In the funniest line of the show, a daughter tells her father (something like), "I thought marijuana was only supposed to make you paranoid after you smoke it."

But I don't wish to scare away opponents of medical marijuana; I love the show even though it presents some ideas with which I disagree, and I think you will enjoy it, too.