TightWind is written by Kyle Baxter. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

The Justice Department released a new policy on medical marijuana today:

Pot-smoking patients or their sanctioned suppliers should not be targeted for federal prosecution in states that allow medical marijuana, prosecutors were told Monday in a new policy memo issued by the Justice Department.

Under the policy spelled out in a three-page legal memo, federal prosecutors are being told it is not a good use of their time to arrest people who use or provide medical marijuana in strict compliance with state law.

In states where medical marijuana is legal (like California), this basically means it is now officially legal. Get a medical license, and you shouldn’t have any issues from there.

This is the best move Obama has made. The federal ban on marijuana ranks as one of our most hypocritical laws. Marijuana isn’t any less safe to use than alcohol (it is likely more safe, at least because of how people tend to use it — at home, in private), and moreover, there really isn’t a way you can effectively ban it.

I don’t particularly like drugs of any kind, marijuana and alcohol included. But that’s my choice, and it should be your choice, too. Whether we use or do not use them should not be decided by the government.

So banning drugs is wrong even if bans work. But they don’t — making drugs illegal hasn’t stopped anyone from getting marijuana, or more dangerous drugs like heroin and cocaine. But who they get it from changes. Rather than buy it from trusted businesses operating within the law, when drugs are banned, the drug trade is controlled by criminal organizations. This is a serious cause of crime and violence across our country and the world. This also entangles drug users with criminals, both mentally and economically. Because drug users have no choice but to buy drugs from criminals, they feel outside of the law, and outside of the mainstream of society, by doing so — even if they are casual marijuana users. Just think about how much harder that makes it for drug users to quit. It pushes them to the margins of society.

So this is a step in the right direction. It isn’t truly legal yet, but that will come with time. And I’m happy to see it.

(Via Jeffrey Miron.)