Software developers study anti-patterns. The practice can be applied to advocating social change, i.e. fighting the drug war.

John English at The Examiner has penned an impressive archive of unhinged anti-drug angriness, and although there's a strong case to be made for ignoring him, his piece "The law and the end of medical marijuana" was just too cute to pass up. He really believes medical marijuana is going to go away:

Another issue is that physicians who recommend marijuana as "medicinal" have recently become at risk of lawsuits. This is the issue that will, no doubt, bring doctors' recommendation of "medical marijuana" to an end. It will come as "medical marijuana patients" understand that they have been injured due to marijuana use and seek out lawyers.

Isn't that precious? People "injured" by one of the safest drugs on the planet. I'm afraid if you want someone to get "injured" by medical marijuana and sue their doctor, you might have to do it yourself. In the process, you may inadvertently find a cure for obsessive drug war zealotry.

Medical marijuana makes people healthier and happier, as the massive and growing number of patients will eagerly attest. If it didn't work, they wouldn't use it. You see, medical marijuana laws don't mandate that sick people ingest potent cannabis against their will. The whole point here is that patients want this option and they've fought, sometimes literally from their deathbeds, to get it. The failure of medical marijuana's opponents to understand or care what patients want is their central fault and it explains perfectly why their arguments and calculations have served them so poorly.

It's sad how often opposition to simple reforms is characterized by fundamental factual ignorance. Here's T. Michael Andrews, a former senior policy adviser at the Department of Homeland Security, freaking out about something that hasn't actually happened:

Mexico's recent decision to legalize hard drugs, including methamphetamines, cocaine, LSD and heroin, sends the wrong message to its citizen and to the international law-enforcement community.
…

Mexico's recent decision sends up the white flag in its commitment to stopping drugs from imploding in its country and says yes to continued trafficking into the United States. [Arizona Daily Star]

The thing is, drugs aren't legal in Mexico. They're just not. This isn't a matter of opinion. All they did was get rid of criminal penalties for possessing (not selling) very small amounts. It's usually referred to a decriminalization and even the U.N. is down with it.

It's possible, of course, that Andrews is merely trying to sensationalize the issue by conflating decriminalization with the more-controversial concept of legalization. But he straight-up insists that "Mexico will now become the vacation destination for all drug users," as though they're on the verge of opening coffeeshops for heroin.

I honestly doubt whether this guy even understands how Mexico's new drug law works, which means the Arizona Daily Star made a bad call by giving him a forum for complaining about it. You can send them a polite note by clicking here.

I'm sure the readers of this blog could all be counted on to do the right thing:

Satellite Beach police are asking beachgoers to report any suspicious packages found along the shore following the weekend discovery of a brick of marijuana near Hightower Beach Park.

"Just report it, leave it alone and call the police," said Cmdr. Jeff Pearson of the Satellite Beach Police Department. [FloridaToday]

Yeah right. I'm sure they get calls all the time from concerned surfer dudes who found huge bags of weed and don’t know what to do. Apparently, the ocean is filled with random drugs:

Police say illegal drugs washing up on the beach happens occasionally as smugglers dump their illicit cargo into the Atlantic Ocean to escape detection from authorities.

"It's pretty common. We live on the beach in Florida and it happens," Pearson said.

And you can bet that authorities never even hear about a lot of it, because quick-thinking citizens take responsibility for disposing of the drugs on their own. Heroes.

Really though, this is just another one of those mind-numbingly absurd phenomena that would never occur if our drug policy didn’t completely suck. It requires an epic and sustained campaign of monumental idiocy to create circumstances under which events like this take place routinely. If a smelly dead fish floats ashore, that's one thing, but when large stashes of illegal drugs are just bobbing around in the ocean, it's perfectly symbolic of the enormous mess the drug war has left in its wake.