Bruce Mirken of the Marijuana Policy Project sends along video of Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) chief John Walters openly boasting about using federal tax dollars to defeat Question 7, a Nevada ballot initiative that would effectively legalize possession of up to one ounce of marijuana for personal use.

Walter’s mere presence in the state to speak against the initiative seems to violate the Hatch Act, not to mention his use of federal dollars to organize against it. Unfortunately, the Office of Special Counsel seems to have made a gaping “drug war exception” to the act, despite the fact that what Walters is doing seems to be in direct defiance of the plain language of the law.

Violation or no, Walters’ and ONDCP’s interference in a state election is yet another example of the Bush administration’s utter contempt for federalism. This administration’s definition of the term seems to be, “the states should be able to set their own policy, except when we disagree with them.”

Notice, too, that even if we were to accept that the social maladies Walters says “correlate” with marijuana use (a relationship that has zero scientific value, and thus oughtn’t even enter into policy discussions), most are caused by the drug’s prohibition, not its recreational use.