In 1972, the National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse reported back to Congress — and recommended ending marijuana prohibition.
I did not realize that a similar commission came to a similar conclusion on another matter. Tim Wu explains, in How laws die:
In 1968, the American pornography industry was new and shocking, and a “deeply concerned” Congress set up a $2 million commission to look into the growing problem. In a way that seems unimaginable today, the commission came back with findings that were exactly opposite to what Congress wanted to hear. To what Newsweek then called “the subcommittee’s unconcealed horror,” the commission concluded that society, not pornography, was the issue. “Much of the ‘problem,’ ” wrote the commission, “stems from the inability or reluctance of people in our society to be open and direct in dealing with sexual matters.” The commission recommended two legal reforms: repealing all obscenity laws at the state, local, and federal levels; and replacing them with new laws to protect children and to control public display. In short, the commission thought pornography, kept at home, was fine — it just had to be kept from minors and out of the public media.In 1970, when the report came out, President Nixon and other politicians outdid one another condemning it. Nixon called it “morally bankrupt” and thundered, “So long as I am in the White House, there will be no relaxation of the national effort to control and eliminate smut from our national life.” The Senate voted overwhelmingly to reject the recommendations. As a legal matter, the commission’s ideas were dead on arrival.
Here’s his point:
Today, despite these laws, there are very few prosecutions centered on mainstream adult pornography. Over the last decade, and without the repeal of a single law, the United States has quietly and effectively put its adult obscenity laws into a deep coma, tolerating their widespread violation with little notice or fanfare. Today’s obscenity enforcement has a new face: It is targeted against “harmful” porn (that is, child pornography and highly violent or abusive materials) and “public” porn, or indecency in the public media. This enormous transformation has occurred without any formal political action. And it illuminates just how America changes law in sensitive areas like obscenity: not so much through action as through neglect.