Ethan Nadelmann speaks to L.A. Times

Ethan Nadelmann, president of the Drug Policy Alliance, was recently invited to chat with the L.A. Times about the war on drugs. Nadelmann always presents an intelligent, nuanced approach to the concept of legalization - in fact, he does this so well that I often don't link to his appearances here because it starts to feel like "common sense" to me. Except, of course, that it isn't. For instance, I loved his critique of media coverage of meth use:

There's an inherent bias about the way you cover some of this stuff. If a reporter is told to do a story on methamphetamine, and he says, "Do me a story on methamphetamine use in America," and he goes out, where's he going to go? Where are you going to find methamphetamine users easily? Jails. Treatment programs … You're going to look specifically at places where people who have a problem with methamphetamine are found. The people who are using methamphetamine without getting caught up in it or controlling their use or starting and stopping and what-have-you – they're not showing up in those two places. They also don't want to talk to you.

So what we don't know is among the world of methamphetamine users, what percent are the problem ones you find in the treatment programs and the jails, and what percent is the rest. Eventually what happens is after the craze passes – the media craze passes in a way – ethnographic studies appear five or 10 years later pointing out that the majority of people who have smoked crack did not have a problem with it, the majority of people who used heroin were in fact chippers, people who never became addicted, et cetera, et cetera. But that gets lost in the initial craziness.

It makes total sense, but it's definitely not common sense, not yet.