Drug Free America, and the full weight of the criminal justice system, drug use in Arizona elementary schools had gone up 1000 percent in four years.^[6] 

On the other hand, the explosive reaction to the two initiatives was evidence that the decisive hour had come. Strategists on both sides know this could be the El Alamein of the war on drugs. After this, everything changes. If marijuana turns out to be a medical miracle instead of the Devil’s handmaiden, public support for confiscating houses and sending nonmedical users to prison will quickly erode. And marijuana is the linchpin. Take reefer out of the equation and the number of illegal drug users instantly drops from 13 million to 3 million, and the drug war shrinks from a national crusade to a sideshow.^[7]  To maintain the present $16-billion-a-year federal effort, the concept of medical marijuana must be defeated at all costs. In Arizona, the state legislature was subjected to intense pressure to gut the law. After a four-month high-level blitz from Washington with the President himself reportedly standing by to lean on the holdouts, the Arizona lawmakers rode to the rescue and passed a bill demanding Federal approval of marijuana before it’s prescribed.^[8]  This put the ball safely back on Washington’s side of the net, but there was nervousness at the State House in Phoenix. You don’t slap down 65 percent of the voters without paying some kind of price on down the line.^[9] And in any event, this particular genie was already out of the bottle. The debate over marijuana that the government has successfully suppressed for 25 years was underway.

Back in the old days when Harry Anslinger had his back to the wall and he needed some impressive numbers, he just made them up. So far there’s no indication that modern drug enforcers have given up the practice, but in the age of digital information, fact-alteration can produce unpredictable results.  When General McCaffrey was asked on CNN whether there was any