Chalk up one more innocent life taken in the failed war on drugs. A Texas foster mother will serve life in prison for the death of a two year old girl, who had been taken from her parents because they smoked marijuana.

Alex Hill was placed in foster care after her father admitted to child welfare investigations that he sometimes used marijuana away from the child after she was asleep. Despite the fact that the child was never in any danger and was by all accounts happy living at home with her parents, she was removed from her home and placed in foster care, where she was abused and then murdered.

Hill’s parents had reported bruises on their child during several of their visitations, but the state never acted nor did they inform the Hills that their daughter’s foster mother, Sherill Small, had already had numerous violations.

The medical examiner stated that Alex had been slammed onto the floor so hard that she suffered “subdural hemorrhaging, subarachnoid hemorrhaging, and retinal hemorrhaging in both eyes.”

The tragic events are just another instance where innocent lives are irreparably altered by the failed policy that is the war on drugs. If Alex’s father had been drinking beers in the next room, no one would have blinked an eye. But because he honestly admitted occasional pot use, his daughter was taken from him and put into the care of a murder.

For nearly sixty years our nation has poured resources into an effort to eradicate drugs through though policing and a war on users. The consequences have been terribly harmful to our society. A large population of nonviolent offenders have lost their rights to vote and must carry the stigma of being felons with them, preventing them for become productive members of society.

Then there’s the innocent victims like little Alex Hill. The state removed her from her home because of the war on drugs, and placed her in the home of someone they already knew couldn’t be trusted. It’s time to end the war the drugs, legalize marijuana, and end the needless loss of life that stems from it.