The Onion’s A.V. Club is a great repository of smart, snarky pop culture commentary, and a frequent web destination for me. And, like me, they think that The Wire is “the greatest accomplishment in the history of television” — an accolade I resisted at first, but realized at some point during the second season that I could no longer deny the obvious. What an amazing show.

So, it’s gratifying to find, via an A.V. Club link, that the show’s creators have endorsed jury nullification in drug cases:

If asked to serve on a jury deliberating a violation of state or federal drug laws, we will vote to acquit, regardless of the evidence presented. Save for a prosecution in which acts of violence or intended violence are alleged, we will — to borrow Justice Harry Blackmun’s manifesto against the death penalty — no longer tinker with the machinery of the drug war. No longer can we collaborate with a government that uses nonviolent drug offenses to fill prisons with its poorest, most damaged and most desperate citizens.

Drug criminalization is one of the most socially destructive policies in the history of the United States, spurring a level of violent crime and official corruption that wouldn’t exist otherwise. The creators of The Wire have demonstrated, via their show, that they understand the intricate web of perverse incentives that the drug war creates. It’s nice to see that they’re trying to take a practical stand as well.