This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Friday, October 19, 2012.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Ballad initiatives in three states may legalize marijuana this election season,

and several former federal drug warriors

don't like it one bit. Their case against states legalizing marijuana is

rooted in some ideas that are just flat out wrong. Tim Lynch, director of the Cato Institute's project on criminal justice, sets the record straight.

This is from the Washington Post.

Despite the urging of drug enforcement experts, officials in Washington have not said how the federal government would

deal with possible state laws in Colorado, Washington, and Oregon that would conflict with the Federal

Controlled Substances Act.

Federal law prohibits the production, possession, and sale of marijuana, and classifies

marijuana as a Schedule I drug putting it in the same category as LSD and heroin.

And it goes on to say that several former administrators of the DEA wrote a letter to Attorney General

Eric Holder asking him to publicly oppose the ballot initiative.

Other people have argued for clarification as well, but essentially what are these people

complaining about and what is the Justice Department or why is the

Justice Department staying silent?

Well, they're complaining because they're former DEA law enforcement officials and they

see that there are three marijuana legalization initiatives on the ballot and that are

polling fairly well and we're getting close to election day they do not want to

see this legalization measure go into effect so they are trying to rally the

Attorney General Eric Holder into getting more outspoken to oppose these measures. We don't know why Attorney General

...