In a recent Op/Ed column, "Legal marijuana challenges culture," John Crisp described new challenges posed by legalizing recreational marijuana in Colorado and Washington. In his conclusion, Crisp wrote: "But the challenge for citizens in both states will be avoiding self-indulgence and achieving a level of moderation. . ."

He is dead wrong. A year ago, any Colorado adult or school kid could get marijuana within two days, provided he or she had $500. Getting dope was, and is, just slightly more challenging than getting alcohol. This holds true for Denver, Minneapolis and Richmond. Legalization will not increase availability because marijuana has always been available. The war against it has accomplished nothing but making criminals out of those few unlucky enough to get caught - at a cost of billions of dollars.

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DENVER- Seven years before legal marijuana went on sale this month in my home state of Colorado, the drug warriors in President George W. Bush's administration released an advertisement that is now worth revisiting.

"I smoked weed and nobody died," intoned the teenage narrator. "I didn't get into a car accident. I didn't O.D. on heroin the next day. Nothing happened."

The television spot from the White House drug czar was intended to discourage marijuana use by depicting it as boring. But in the process, the government suggested that smoking a little pot is literally, in the words of the narrator, "the safest thing in the world."

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BOGOTA, Colombia - Twenty years ago this month, U.S. authorities helped bring down Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar, but Washington's global war on drugs has not let up. In fact, it has become costlier, bloodier, more widespread and futile.

Escobar died in a hail of bullets on Dec. 2, 1993, fleeing from police on a rooftop in his native city of Medellin. It took a 3,000-strong elite force of Colombian police-supported by U.S. intelligence agencies and $73 million in aid that year alone-to bring down the drug baron.

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On Oct. 29, Republican congressman and tea party affiliate Trey Radel was arrested for the possession of cocaine after allegedly purchasing it from an undercover agent outside a Washington restaurant. According to The Washington Post, this was not the first cocaine purchase by Radel since being elected 10 months earlier.

Radel pleaded guilty to possession of cocaine and was sentenced to one year of probation, with no jail time and the ability to retain his position as a House of Representatives member. This poses the question: Why is it that the U.S. jails 750,000 for marijuana possession each year, but lets off a politician who has repeatedly bought cocaine? Granted, marijuana is a Schedule I drug while cocaine is a Schedule II drug, but this does not excuse disregarding the law for people who meet a certain standard.

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Washington Think Tank Says Small Changes to Virginia Laws Could Make Big Differences

Virginia's justice system is too expensive, ineffective, unfair and headed for a crisis, according to a policy brief released Wednesday by the Justice Policy Institute.

"Despite some recent small progress in the areas of post-incarceration re-entry, particularly felony disenfranchisement, the state continues to suffer under misguided policies and practices of the past," the study concludes.

Reaction from state officials was not immediately available Wednesday. The Justice Policy Institute is a liberal think tank based in Washington.

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Colonial Heights Man Accused of Accepting Bribe, Smuggling Contraband into Federal Prison

A former federal corrections officer could spend years behind bars for accepting a bribe and smuggling marijuana and cigarettes into a federal prison in Prince George County.

The former correctional officer, Jeffery T. Jones, 53, of Colonial Heights pleaded guilty Tuesday in federal court in Richmond to two of nine counts in an indictment against him.

He admitted to accepting money to provide marijuana and cigarettes to two prisoners at the Federal Correctional Complex Petersburg in Prince George.

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Last year voters in Colorado and Washington approved ballot measures legalizing recreational marijuana use. Last week Colorado approved another measure that imposes a 15 percent excise tax and a 10 percent retail tax on pot. Portland, Maine, also passed a measure legalizing weed. So did three more Michigan cities (bringing the total there to five).

Virginia should, too. Here are five reasons why.

(1) It's none of the government's business. Consider: "Marijuana prohibition is perhaps the oldest and most persistent nanny-state law we have in the U.S. We simply cannot afford a government that tries to save people from themselves. It is not the role of government to try to correct bad behavior, as long as those behaviors are not directly causing physical harm to others." Those are not the words of some San Fran hippie holdover with love beads and a Seventies-vintage VW bus. They come from former Sen. Tom Tancredo of Colorado, a Republican with a lifetime rating from the American Conservative Union of 99 percent.

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There is growing bipartisan support for escaping the cell-block money trap.

Virginians who didn't blink at the time may have noticed that state sentencing reform got a quick twirl from both major party candidates during the gubernatorial campaign - though no dance partner.

In a state that in 1994 sent George Allen to the governor's mansion on a promise to end parole, talk of abandoning mandatory minimums for some offenses creates barely a ripple as we head into 2014.

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To the Editor:

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, commander-in-chief of Washington's failed War on drugs, recently issued what looks a lot like a domestic version of Vermont Sen. George Aiken's famous 1966 face-saving formula for exiting from America's lost war in Vietnam: Declare victory and get out. After more than 58,000 deaths, that is exactly what he did.

And now a timely American Civil Liberties Union report titled, "The War on Marijuana in Black and White" explains why Holder's similar announcement is especially good news for African-Americans nationwide and in Virginia.

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Aggressive enforcement of federal drug laws has proven quite effective at building up law enforcement agencies and exploding government expenditures. But actually reducing drug use in the U.S.? Not quite.

That assessment isn't in dispute. An Associated Press investigation in 2010 revealed this nation has spent $1 trillion on drug-control efforts since 1970. In return, an estimated 37 million nonviolent drug offenders have been imprisoned, the number of overdoses has steadily increased and the number of drug users nearly doubled.

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On marijuana policy, there's a rift between the federal government and the states. It started with California's allowing marijuana for medical use in 1996, widened as several other states followed suit and became too big to ignore 10 months ago, when voters in Colorado and Washington decided to legalize the drug for recreational use. Under federal law possession is still a crime.

After conspicuous silence, the Justice Department announced in August that it wouldn't try to put the toothpaste back in the tube - it wouldn't sue to block the Colorado and Washington state laws as long as those states put in place "strong and effective regulatory and enforcement systems." But this policy hasn't cleared up all the confusion arising from this tricky situation. Many practical questions remain, as became obvious at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Tuesday about conflicts between state and federal marijuana laws.

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U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder's call last week for a revision of mandatory federal sentencing laws is a welcome but overdue proposal. Holder specifically took aim at low-level, nonviolent drug offenders who have filled the nation's prisons during the so-called "War on Drugs" of the past 30 years.

Mandatory minimum sentencing and so-called "three strikes" laws were enacted throughout the 1980s and 1990s as politicians sought to "get tough" on crime and more aggressively combat the failing "War of Drugs." These laws removed any discretion in sentencing from judges based on the actual conditions of specific cases and imposed arbitrary prison time for general classifications of different types of crimes.

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DENVER - Whether it is the impeached Bill Clinton leaving office with solid approval ratings or the once-disgraced Eliot Spitzer now surging in New York City electoral polls, there is ample evidence that America forgives public figures for their transgressions. And yet, contrition is not exactly common on the public stage. Like the Fonz from "Happy Days," today's media stars, politicians and celebrities often have trouble saying the words "I was wrong" or "I am sorry" - even when they have made obvious mistakes and when apologies are clearly necessary.

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Attorney General Eric Holder's speech to the American Bar Association in San Francisco was a bit like hearing from a stockbroker after trading has closed. "Well, of course the market went down." Well, of course the U.S. needs to rethink drug laws and enforcement.

Decades after America righteously declared a zero tolerance policy toward all drug crimes and nonviolent crimes involving drugs, Holder and others want to stop the abuses.

Seize the belated insights whenever they come along.

Support for being "Smart on Crime," in the AG's words, is aimed at undoing laws that maintain "a vicious cycle of poverty, criminality and incarceration" that "traps too many Americans and weakens too many communities."

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I thought I'd never live to see the day. But now it's happened. An attorney general of the United States has finally said he is ready to blow the whistle on America's ill-fated, racially tinged and cruelly applied "war on drugs."

Eric Holder signaled the shift in a speech Monday to the American Bar Association. He admitted that the drug war, which his department has spearheaded, has wrought grim unintended consequences including decimating communities of color - part of "a vicious cycle of poverty, criminality and incarceration that traps too many Americans and weakens too many communities."

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It's been a war on justice, an assault on equal protection under the law. And a war on families, removing millions of fathers from millions of homes.

And a war on money, spilling it like water.

And a war on people of color, targeting them with drone-strike efficiency.

We never call it any of those things, though all of them fit. No, we call it the War on Drugs. It is a 42-year, trillion-dollar disaster that has done nothing - underscore that:

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Students who participate in extracurricular activities in Orange County schools next year will be subject to random drug testing.

The School Board Monday passed, by a 4-1 vote, a measure that would require testing for "Students Involved with Competitive Extracurricular Activities."

The regulation was developed by a committee of parents, students, school staff and community members in response to the findings of the 2013 Youth Risk Behavior Survey completed earlier this year.

Under the new program, 10 percent of students in grades 6 through 12 who are involved in competitive extra-curricular activities will be randomly selected to complete testing for drug and alcohol use.

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Under a new proposed plan, some Orange County students may soon undergo drug testing.

An Orange County Public Schools committee, comprised of parents, students, coaches, activities directors and administrators, has spent the past several weeks working on a plan that would screen students for drug use.

The plan would only affect those students in grades 6-12 who participate in competitive extracurricular activities and Virginia High School League related activities-sports, band, JROTC, Orange County B.A.S.S. Anglers and more. It wouldn't affect co-cirricular activities such as Future Business Leaders of America and Future Farmers of America.

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When will Virginia pass medical marijuana legislation? Just think of the money the commonwealth could save. It's about time Virginia lawmakers woke up and smelled the coffee. They should take a look around them. Seventeen states including Washington D.C. have passed some sort of legislation regarding marijuana.

It would be a bad thing for Virginia to be last on the bandwagon. It would be a good thing for the state and its citizenry to get this legislation passed as soon as possible. If the state needs a road map on how to get it done, all they have to do is look at Colorado and Washington state.

DANVILLE.

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Sometimes the government just doesn't get it and the people do. When everyone is violating the law, it's time to change the law. Consider three areas where the government has it wrong and needs to change: Internet sales taxation, marijuana use and outdated laws regarding consensual sex between adults. Internet sales tax Sales taxes on online purchases have been a contentious issue for years, but mostly at the federal level. States like Virginia and 10 others have passed measures that treat online retailers, like Amazon, the same as brick and-mortar stores: everyone collects state and local sales taxes on behalf of state and local governments.

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