After the Islamic Revolution of 1979, “the government tried a more traditional approach: arresting drug users and putting them in jail. But two decades later, it recognized that this approach had failed.” So now the Mullahs stress treatment, harm reduction, needle-exchange programs and the like. There’s still illegality and interdiction. Not perfectly libertarian, of course, but less totalitarian than certain regimes. Thanks to Scott Horton.

Of course, if the neocons conduct regime change in Iran, maybe they can displace this drug policy for a more US-friendly policy — like the Taliban policy financed by the US all the way until the Afghanistan war. Or like the policy here that has put millions of people in rape rooms. The US was, after all, able to give gun control, theocracy, socialism, curfews, direct taxation and religious and gender persecution to Iraq, without ever disturbing the continuity in torture and martial law. So instituting drug Reaganism in Iran shouldn’t be so hard, once the fighting stops.