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Note: I posted this a few weeks ago, but withdrew it so I could use some of the language in a Op-ed which was rejected by The Washington Post (probably for being too awesome). I repost it today in response to Obama's recent rejection of marijuana decriminalization.

One of the most fascinating developments of the '08 presidential primaries has been the rising taboo against criticizing the candidates for their youthful experimentation with drugs. We've come a long way since "I didn't inhale," but is this really an evolving discourse surrounding drug use in American life or merely a truce between the privileged press and political classes?

It began with the resignation of Hillary Clinton's New Hampshire campaign co-chair following barbed remarks about Barack Obama's past drug use. Now, a comment by BET founder and Clinton supporter Robert L. Johnson is drawing similar condemnations:

Johnson said the Clintons have been "deeply and emotionally involved in black issues — when Barack Obama was doin' something in the neighborhood that I won't say what he was doin,' but he said it in his book."

The Clinton campaign later put out statement in which Johnson claimed he was referring not to drug use but to community organizing.

The Obama campaign Monday said that story does not wash. "His tortured explanation doesn’t hold up against his original statement," campaign press secretary Bill Burton said in a statement. [Politico]

Clearly, conventional wisdom now holds that voters don't think past drug use rises to the level of relevance in a presidential campaign. To even mention such a thing is considered so rude and toxic that doing so reflects more poorly on the messenger than the target. And this is the Most Important Job in the World we're interviewing for.

What we're witnessing here is notable to be sure. But is this really a signal that our society is maturing in its attitude about drug use, or just another example of the class-based prejudice that ignores drug experimentation among the educated and upwardly-mobile, while police continue to flatten poor communities with their massive drug war hammers?

As rare and encouraging as it is find the media directing its guile towards the accuser and not the user, we still live in a society that collects urine from millions of blue-collar Americans as a method of assessing their job qualifications. We still live in a society that revokes aid for higher education from students with drug convictions, a society that revokes low-income housing and food stamps from poor people for engaging in the exact same behavior whose mere mention is now off-limits even in the no-holds-barred realm of presidential politics. And, unbelievably, we live in society where felony disenfranchisement is so widespread it can change the outcome of these same elections in which the criminal histories of the candidates are never to be discussed.

Now that our pundits and politicians have elected to shield one another from the consequences of their own indulgence, will they bestow the blessings of this grand enlightenment on the rest of us? Perhaps, but not until the people hold these high offices hostage and demand equal justice from the hypocrites who quibble over the contents of their autobiographies while fathers of four wait for their records to be expunged so they can apply at Home Depot.

As residents arrived in the parking lot at the school, several noticed movement on the roof of the buildings. The Lima SWAT team was in position looking down on the gathering speakers. “Here we come in good faith, and they have snipers on the roofs of our school! We came in peace, and they are ready to gun us down like dogs!” Willie Manley vowed to ask them face to face. “How can we trust you, when you can’t trust us?”

The mood seemed to changed as people continued to walk into the school many taking a final glance at the rooftops in disbelief, shaking their heads and commenting to friends. [The Sojourner's Truth]

Our Truth In Strange Places Award goes this month to the new US Attorney for Northern California, Joseph Russoniello, who said, in regard to cracking down on medical marijuana,

“We could spend a lifetime closing dispensaries and doing other kinds of drugs, enforcement actions, bringing cases and prosecuting people, shoveling sand against the tide. It would be terribly unproductive and probably not an efficient use of precious federal resources,”

Chicago Tribune columnist Steve Chapman is absolutely right that decriminalizing marijuana will save taxpayers boatloads of money and free up limited resources so that police can focus on preventing violent crime, as he pointed out in his recent column "A truth Obama won't dare tell" (Commentary, Feb. 3).

But it's absolutely wrong of Chapman to say, as he does in the column, that endorsing this common-sense policy change "would be considered political suicide" for a presidential candidate like U.S. Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.).

To the contrary, a CNN/Time Magazine poll taken in 2002 shows that 72 percent of Americans support marijuana decriminalization.

Obama's latest position opposing decriminalization will only win him favor with the mere 19 percent of Americans who, according to the poll, favor the continued arrest and jailing of otherwise law-abiding citizens who happen to use marijuana.

Supporting the criminalization of responsible adults is not only a senseless and cruel public policy, it is politically foolish. [Chicago Tribune]

Of course, polling data like this doesn’t necessarily reflect precisely how those same people will behave at the ballot box. And, as Pete Guither explains, any candidate endorsing reform faces the prospect of vicious mischaracterizations from their opposition.

All of this is true. Still, success in American politics has always depended on a candidate's ability to gracefully negotiate divisive issues. Just as an opponent's harsh attacks might chip away support for a controversial policy position, so may passionate words and sound reasoning reshape public opinion itself, turning polling data on its head and bringing legitimacy to ideas long relegated to the political fringes.

In that rare instant when the pre-written script is abandoned and the truth is permitted to speak for a moment on its own behalf, we have no frame of reference for the political viability of marijuana reform in presidential politics. The "foolishness" Tom describes is the mistake of recognizing common ground within the electorate and declining to indulge and nurture public values which run parallel to the candidate's own.

I suspect that the moment an already exciting and change-driven candidate takes the marijuana issue on the offensive and challenges Americans to envision a better policy, the popular preconceptions of our pundits and politicians will be disproved. If I am correct, then the biggest obstacle facing any politician who'd like to reform our marijuana laws is nothing other than his/her own willingness to throw the first punch.