Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, introduced legislation Tuesday that aims to end minimum sentencing for nonviolent drug offenders. In a Tweet Tuesday, Wiener said: “The War on Drugs failed. Let’s own that failure & move forward.” As one commenter quickly pointed out, the War on Drugs succeeded at one thing:

by Charles Irwell During the trial of Michael Jackson’s doctor, I happened to be at my mother’s house. We watched a news report that detailed the extent of Jackson’s pharmaceutical drug addiction. My mother, a proud NHS nurse of 40 years, shook her head in incredulity at the drugs Jackson’s physician

Ending the Drug War is the best way to heal the divide between police and the communities they serve. Now that it’s basically impossible to ignore this grotesque and increasingly militarized divide between police and the communities they serve everybody has his or her own band-aid they’d like to slap