“Ignorance, lies and propaganda only flourished in a society that did not have the means of accessing knowledge, research and objective opinion easily. It’s hard to maintain such lies when the average person has the whole wealth of human knowledge accessible from a device in their pocket.”
“The momentum to treat marijuana as a legal drug is irreversible,” says McCaffrey, the former drug czar. He no longer accepts invitations to appear on television to debate the issue because he says the networks “only wanted a rented idiot general who didn’t understand that marijuana was harmless and filling America’s jails. The opposition has gone silent. The politicians, police, judges know this is bad policy but they don’t make a peep. So we’re going to end up with impaired surgeons and air pilots. We’re just accepting another drug of abuse.”
After half a century of advocacy, Aldrich now predicts that “marijuana’s going to be legal in the United States in 10 years. Of course, I first said that in 1967.” He laughs. But this time, he says, it’s unstoppable: “It’s taken 40 years to reach a point where our national leaders have smoked. The last three presidents have admitted it.”