The entrance to the San Francisco Medical Cannabis Clinic in San Francisco, Monday, Oct. 19, 2009. Pot-smoking patients or their sanctioned suppliers should not be targeted for federal prosecution in states that allow medical marijuana, prosecutors were told in a new policy memo issued by the Justice Department. (AP)

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Before 1914, drug use was no crime in America — and millions of Americans were addicted to tonics peddled off the back of wagons and laced with opium or coca. Then came the big crackdown.

Now, “medical marijuana” is on the move. Fourteen states permit its use. And pretty broad use. LA has a thousand medical marijuana shops. In Colorado, thousands of young men have suddenly complained of chronic pain and signed up.

Last week, the U.S. Department of Justice officially said it will not prosecute what the states accept. Is defacto decriminalization on the way?

This hour, On Point: Marijuana, medical marijuana, and the law.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Joining us from Washington is Josh Meyer, reporter for the Los Angeles Times. He reported on the Justice Department’s new policy on medical marijuana, announced last week. LATimes.com offers an interactive map of medical marijuana dispensaries in LA, and a map showing the states that have legalized medical marijuana.

Also from Washington we’re joined by Peter Cohen, adjunct professor of law at Georgetown University and the chair of the Physicians Health Program of the District of Columbia Medical Society.

And from Los Angeles we’re joined by Mark Kleiman, professor of policy studies and director of the Drug Policy Analysis Center at UCLA. His most recent book is “When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment.”

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Journalist Nick Reding grew up in one Midwest: steady, sturdy, a little bit storybook.

He went back and found another. High as a kite on crank – on methamphetamines – and a living wreck.

He honed in on little Olwein, Iowa, lifted the covers, and found a terrible mess: meth, addiction, depravity. And beneath those, roots of despair grounded in a globalized economy gone wrong. Communities – in Olwein and far beyond – left desperately adrift. He’s brought us the story in a book called “Methland.”

Up next, On Point: Nick Reding and “Methland.”

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Nick Reding, author of “Methland: The Death and Life of an American Small Town.”

Nathan Lein, assistant county prosecutor, Oelwein, IA.

Adderall (Photo by hipsxxhearts, Flickr.com)

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Attention-deficit drugs like Adderall and Ritalin have helped millions of ADHD kids get along. For a new generation, they’ve also fed a black market in college dorms and high-pressure labs, where off-label use by the non-ADHD gets term papers written and lab reports done.

Now, pharmaceutical companies — and some scientists — are saying maybe we should consider “cognitive enhancers,” drugs like these, for the general population.

Some call it “cosmetic neurology,” and say it’s time. Others say it’s a bad, bad idea.

This hour, On Point: The debate over drugs for the mind.

You can join the conversation. Is it time to loosen up? To think of Adderall and Ritalin the way you might think of an hour of exercise? Or a cup of coffee? A fine way to sharpen up? Or is general use of pills for the mind a bad idea?

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Joining us from New York is Ellen Gibson at BusinessWeek magazine. She recently wrote the article “Mental Pick Me Ups: The Coming Boom.”

From Philadelphia, we’re joined by Martha Farah, professor of psychology and director at the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Cognitive Neuroscience. She is co-author of a commentary in the December issue of the journal Nature, “Towards responsible use of cognitive-enhancing drugs by the healthy.”

From Garrison, N.Y., is Thomas Murray, president of The Hastings Center, a bioethics think tank. He was formerly the director of the Center for Biomedical Ethics in the School of Medicine at Case Western Reserve University.

And from Washington, we’re joined by Nora Volkow, director of the National Insitute on Drug Abuse at the National Institutes of Health.

America’s health care costs are breaking budgets all over, but the tab for pharmaceuticals just keeps rising.

In 1980, Americans spent $12 billion on prescription drugs. Now it’s more like $200 billion. More than any other country — and yet we don’t live longer than others.

Reporter Melody Petersen asked what’s going on. What she found was shocking conflicts of interest. Medical professionals co-opted by drug companies for shady research and non-stop marketing. It looks like a scandal of pushers.

This hour, On Point: Our daily meds, and a nation hooked on prescription drugs.

- Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Melody Petersen, an award-winning former reporter for The New York Times and The San Jose Mercury News, and the author of “Our Daily Meds: How the Pharmaceutical Companies Transformed Themselves Into Slick Marketing Machines and Hooked the Nation on Prescription Drugs.”

Daniel Carlat, M.D., professor of psychiatry at Tufts University School of Medicine and editor-in-chief of The Carlat Psychiatry Report.

From American streets to Andean coca farms, the United States has battled drugs since Richard Nixon was president. And yet, some 35 years and 500 billion dollars later, drugs are everywhere, and cheap, and Americans are using them in epidemic proportions.

Critics say the War on Drugs is lost — half a million people in prison for drug crimes, while the cartels remain two steps ahead of the Feds.

Now, with a new billion-plus dollar plan to go after Mexican cartels, will we repeat the mistakes of the past?

This hour, On Point: America’s lost war on drugs, and the search for a new way.

-Jayne Clayson

Guests:

Ben Wallace-Wells, Contributing Editor at Rolling Stone Magazine.

Ethan Brown, author of the just-released “Snitch: Informants, Cooperators, and the Corruption of Justice.”