Why, indeed?

The fact is that every step of the way, regarding the issue of re-legalization of present illicits, when the people have spoken, legislatively or in referenda, the pols and 'anti-drug' bureaucrats have dared to sass them by proposing strictures the people never intended nor wanted.

I recall very clearly the day after Props200 and 215 passed in Arizona and California respectively the execrable news conference that Donna Shalala, Janet Reno and DrugCzar Barry McCaffery held in reaction to that passage, and to say it was insulting is to engage in understatement.

The implication they made was that the electorate was too stupid to realize they'd been fooled by a  slick media campaign.

This institutionalized arrogance on the part of putative 'public servants' is part of the reason why we have such a problem with officials not adhering to the law when the law doesn't suit their prerogatives...or paychecks.

When they engage in this effrontery, they should be called on the carpet immediately and forced to make public apologies, or risk being sacked. Such arrogance has no place in a supposed democracy, but because it has been allowed to continue, the assumption of those in power was that it was acceptable.

The end result of that assumption were abominations like the Iraq and AfPak Wars, national economic policy dictated by bankers and their back-pocket residing buddies in Congress, a wounded and bleeding economy, and a society on the edge of breakdown, to name a few.