The high-water mark for drug prohibition in the 20th Century may have been reached on November 5, 1996 when citizens of California and Arizona chose to ignore the warnings of President Clinton, former Presidents Bush, Ford and Carter, the governors of both states and all their collective law enforcement and drug experts, and voted overwhelmingly in favor of making  marijuana legal for medical use. It was a stunning defeat for the prohibitionists. Both Proposition 200 in Arizona and Proposition 215 in California allowed medical patients to use marijuana virtually without limit, but the Arizona voters went further, turning the clock back 80 years to a time when doctors could prescribe any drug they saw fit, including heroin.

Apparently taken by surprise when late summer polls showed both initiatives leading by wide margins, the anti-drug establishment launched a main force effort to head the measures off. Drug czar Barry McCaffrey made repeated trips to the West Coast blasting the proponents for their cruel hoax. “How dare they capitalize on the suffering of victims of cancer and AIDS,