This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Friday, May 15, 2009. I'm Caleb Brown.

President Obama's Drugs R wants to drop the metaphor, War on Drugs, much as the administration ended President Bush's so-called war on terror.

But they're just words.

They are not of themselves changes in policy.

Will more meaningful drug policy reform follow? And if it does... in policy

reform follow, and if it does follow,

will it be a de-escalation, or simply a reshuffling of increasing drug-fighting

budgets?

Tim Lynch, director of the Cato Institute's project on criminal justice, tells us.

Well, hopefully it signals a dramatic change in the policy in the United States.

We've kind of been in this war atmosphere,

this militarized approach to drug policy for many, many years.

And the hope of among reformers is that this new drugs are we've got Kurlikowski is coming in with a new administration

that's going to shift this policy away from the war approach, the militarized approach, the

criminalized approach, and reverse the policies we've seen in the drug war for the past 50 years.

For a lot of people, Ethan Natalman among them have suggested that rather than taking a get tough war on drugs type approach,

that medicalization is actually a better approach.

And it seems like maybe that's the that's the way that

czar Kurlikowski would would like us to look at it as well.

It might be it's really too early to say.

I mean this is this is nice that he It's really too early to say.

I mean, this is nice that he wants to get rid of the War on Drugs metaphor,

...