News You Can Use

Reason has the nation’s five dumbest drug laws. I’m especially fond of this one:

In New York, possession of small amounts of pot has been decriminalized, but it’s still a crime to take the pot out of your pocket and wave it around like you just don’t care. That distinction — between possession and display — seems pretty simple on its face. How hard could it be to keep your weed out of view? Not hard at all, unless an officer with the NYPD stops you as part of the city’s stop-and-frisk policy, and asks you to empty out your trousers. In that case, the simple act of pulling out your weed for inspection qualifies as display. According to The New York Times, this Kafkaesque paradox results in “tens of thousands of young black and Latino men who are stopped by the New York City police for other reasons…being charged with a crime” after emptying their pockets.

The drug war has descended into parody — a life-ruining parody.