On the 75th Anniversary of Repeal Day ...

The 75th Anniversary of Repeal Day -- the day when the 21st Amendment was ratified, thereby ending prohibition -- happens this Friday, and there several few cool attempts to tie in drug policy reform to that anniversary.

LEAP (Law Enforcement Against Prohibition) has started up a website called WeCanDoItAgain.com, intended to galvanize public support around drug policy reform. Dale Gieringer from California NORML also penned a good op-ed drawing the historical parallel between the work of the 1930s reformers and what we're doing today. Radley Balko has a piece up at Reason, and Ilya Somin has a post at the Volokh Conspiracy. I've got my own piece coming out tomorrow in the Daily Journal, and I'll post that tomorrow. (Update: op-ed now posted here.) For tonight, though, here's a re-posting of the little YouTube video I made on this subject a long time ago: "Eighteenth Amendment Blues."

Above all else, Repeal Day should be a reminder to us that things can change. Prohibition was a policy literally embedded in the American Constitution, not just in the comparatively malleable language of statutes. The battles we're fighting today merely to change state and federal laws can and will be won in the fullness of time, because common sense, public health and science are on the side of change.