Medical marijuana (Coaster420 via Wikimedia Commons)

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a conservative, is cosponsoring a bill that would legalize industrial hemp production in his home state of Kentucky, according to CBS News. In a reversal from his stance of one year ago, McConnell stated, "I am convinced that allowing [hemp]'s production will be a positive development for Kentucky's farm families and economy."

In 2013, several states including New Hampshire and Rhode Island will consider legislation which could result in more lenient drug policy in those states.

ALSO SEE: Colorado And Washington Legalize Marijuana

In a White House blog post titled "Toward A Smarter Drug Policy," Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) Gil Kerlikowske encourages a shift toward viewing addiction as a public health issue rather than a law enforcement issue, noting that "we cannot simply arrest our way out of the drug problem." 

The ONDCP's Record of Reform reveals a series of drug policy shifts implemented by the first Obama administration, including the 2010 Fair Sentencing Act, which addressed sentencing disparity between possession of crack and powder cocaine. The American Civil Liberties Union estimated that the act reduced the disparity from 100:1 to 18:1, explaining that "because the majority of people arrested for crack offenses are African American, the 100:1 ration resulted in vast racial disparities in the average length of sentences for comparable offenses."

In 2011, the Sentencing Commission moved to retroactively apply the altered policies of the Fair Sentencing Act to those sentenced under the old guidelines.

(Watch New Jersey Governor Chris Christie call the War on Drugs "a failure")

President Richard Nixon declared "War on Drugs" in 1971. "We must wage what I have called total war against public enemy number one in the United States, the problem of dangerous drugs," he said in a 1972 press conference.

ALSO SEE: Reapproaching Drug Education: Curriculum Rooted In Reality

A series of recent op-eds, essays, and radio pieces question the legacy of Nixon's effort to halt drug trafficking and evaluate the current trends in sentencing and legalization. "Have we lost the war on drugs?" asked a Wall Street Journal essay, which argued that "after more than four decades of a failed experiment, the human cost has become too high. It is time to consider the decriminalization of drug use and the drug market." Similar concerns over human casualties in the drug war were echoed in analyses in The Atlantic and in a 2011 Global Commission on Drug Policy report whose Executive Summary opens with the statement, "The global war on drugs has failed, with devastating consequences for individuals and societies around the world."

For a look at how the notorious Rockefeller Drug Laws affected residents of New York beginning in the 1970's, go to NPR.

For a comprehensive and multi-faceted examination of the War on Drugs, go to PBS' Frontline report.

("The US War On Drugs: A Racist But Failed Policy?" from Al Jazeera, featuring a discussion with Obama's "drug czar" Gil Kerlikowske) 

For more on changing drug policy, go here.

To reach Executive Producer Lauren Madow, go here. Follow her on Twitter.