Just as proponents of syringe exchange, and of Latin American sovereignty and rights, and of access to pain medication, and of asset forfeiture reform, and of sentencing reform, and of police practice reform, and of racial justice, and of smaller government, and of violence reduction, and of civil liberties are discovering, it is impossible to advocate for rational changes in one part of Prohibition without feeling the full weight of an opposition dedicated to the maintenance of the illusion that it can work. Because when as great a structure as the Drug War machine has been constructed on a foundation of thin air, akin to an overfilled balloon, it is the unassuming man with the pin in his hand who must be silenced and defeated.

 So the feds are right. Medical marijuana is not about the sick and the dying. It is about Lockheed Martin and the defense industry. It is about the private prison industry, and the companies who build them, and the unions of the men and women who staff them. It is about textile and petrochemical companies. It is about an excuse to deploy our military forces in Latin America. It is about the seizing and conversion of assets into the treasuries of governments. It is about the perpetuity of bureaucratic careers and bureaucratic agencies. It is about the stick which is used in controlling poor and minority communities. And it is about federal power over the lives of every single American in every state of the union. It is not about the sick. Or the dying. Or the children. Or even marijuana. It is about the Drug War itself.

So the time is upon us. The time for all of those advocates of all of those rational reforms to arrive together at the inescapable conclusion that the feds, in their own deceitful way, have been right all along. To paraphrase President Clinton's own campaign theme, "It's the Drug War, stupid." And it is time, through the prism of caring for the sick, or allowing syringes to the addicted, or justice to the oppressed, that all of the advocates of all of the various sub-issues begin to examine, very critically and very publicly, what the war has wrought. For we are fighting a common enemy in the drug war establishment. And in defending their indefensible system, the thing they want most to avoid is the coalescing of the resistance. Their structure, the enormous and imposing Drug War machine, sits upon a foundation which, like an overfilled balloon, is full of nothing but air. What we need to understand, as the drug warriors obviously do, is that we, as reformers, are in possession of the pins.