The United States of marijuana

In his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos mentioned the United States that have made marijuana legal:

“We have moral authority to state that, after decades of fighting against drug trafficking, the world has still been unable to control this scourge that fuels violence and corruption throughout our global community. … It makes no sense to imprison a peasant who grows marijuana, when nowadays, for example, its cultivation and use are legal in eight states of the United States. … The manner in which this war against drugs is being waged is equally or perhaps even more harmful than all the wars the world is fighting today, combined.”

In the United States, his criticism of the war on drugs received widespread news coverage at alternative sites like Democracy Now and anti-prohibition sites like the Drug War Chronicle. But the only mainstream news site we could find that gave it prominence was the co-op Associated Press—and some of its members who carried the AP story, such as Yahoo News, dropped the drug section of the piece.