The movement to trim jail populations is one of the few areas where the right and left have found common cause.
There are lots of reasons Louisiana is a leader in incarceration, and high crime is one of them. But Democrats and Republicans have agreed in recent years that locking up minor drug offenders is not the way to go, and it may in fact sponge up minor criminals and set them on a path to become major criminals.
One consequence is the growing consensus against arresting people for possession of small amounts of marijuana.
But does our tolerance for marijuana mean that we want a United States senator who smokes it on TV?
Maybe we're fixing to find out, because Gary Chambers, the maverick Baton Rouge activist who finished a respectable third in a congressional race last year, is now running for the Senate, and his first ad features a video of him wearing a suit and tie and sitting outdoors in an easy chair smoking weed.
The 37-second ad begins with Chambers saying that someone is arrested for marijuana possession in the United States every 37 seconds.
"Black people are four times more likely to be arrested for marijuana laws than White people" Chambers explains. "States waste $3.7 billion enforcing marijuana laws every year."
The ad was filmed in New Orleans, where the City Council instructed police not to arrest or even cite people for small amounts of marijuana.
Chambers is a long shot in a race in which the incumbent, Republican John Kennedy, is sitting on $10 million in campaign cash and has the backing of former President Donald Trump.
Voters can decide for themselves whether they want to replace Kennedy with a pot smoker. But the politics of marijuana surely have evolved over the generation since Bill Clinton claimed that he tried pot but didn't inhale.
-- The Advocate, Jan. 25