When facing endless “war,” be it a war on drugs or a war on terror, such niceties as constitutional rights always end up a causality of these nebulous conflicts. After all, when eternally battling with a generalized evil that will never cease to exist, the trampling of a few personal freedoms can be framed as an acceptable price. The latest example of this trend can be seen with this horrible new Supreme Court ruling, which basically shreds our Fourth Amendment rights.

The lone dissent was from Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg who realized this ruling just gave police carte blanche to routinely ignore the Fourth Amendment in drug cases. Police can use almost any noise they hear to claim they have “good reason” to believe evidence is being destroyed, and if the history of how police have bent and broken the rules to fight the war on drugs is any guide, they will.

The NPR program Planet Money this week had a very interesting segment about the economics of illegal drugs in which they interview a former drug dealer. The best part of the segment is that it starts with an honest admission that the economic data clearly shows drug prohibitions have been a total failure.

The US Government has actually been working to allow hundreds of military-style guns to be smuggled into Mexico to see where they would end up.

The negative costs of our nation’s “war on drugs” reach into so many aspects our country that they are almost impossible to count. This isn’t just the direct cost of incarceration, enforcement, and the loss of tax revenue, there are also the many less obvious costs such as long-term lower wages for those with drug-related criminal records and, as I recently learned, the destruction of our domestic flower industry.

The violence in Mexico–directly a result of the huge profits that can be made thanks to the US prohibitions against drugs–reached new heights last year.

Bob Ainsworth, British MP, has served as both the Home Office drugs minster and the Secretary of State for Defence. Today, Ainsworth has come out for legalizing and regulating drugs, stating the “prohibition has failed to protect us,” and calling the war on drugs a failure.

It’s long been understood among the traveling public that Mexico is problematic. Police corruption and endemic kidnapping long were reasons to stay away from sites that were off the beaten path. Now, with the gang warfare that plagues our southern border, those trying to make a living by farming also are leaving.

It certainly looks like the South Dakota Highway Patrol is interfering with the state’s medical marijuana ballot initiative, which is in a tight race ahead of November 2.

The campaign for Measure 13, South Dakota’s medical marijuana initiative, called out the state Highway Patrol for a big media push last week around two separate marijuana busts from August that the Patrol tied to out-of-state medical marijuana patients.

The Rand Corporation is notorious for its history of pro-drug-war studies. A report of theirs from earlier this year on Proposition 19 was full of dubious claims based on what even they had to admit were just guesses. Once again, with their newest report about marijuana legalization, the Rand Corporation buries the lede from their own study, one which strongly supporters the anti-cartel claims made by marijuana reformers. While not part of the press release, the study, in fact, backs up one of the main arguments of the supporters of marijuana legalization. The study determines legalizing, taxing and regulating marijuana could eliminate all the profits the Mexican drug cartels currently make thanks to cannabis prohibition.