Seattle's nanny-ness is official.

Reason, a feisty magazine with a libertarian bent, has deemed the Emerald City as the second worst nanny-state city in America. Only Chicago ranked lower on the list of 35 featured in the magazine's September issue.

It's not talked about much in tight-smile Seattle, but this is a very, um, nurturing place. Our citizens' best interests are carefully tended to by government that knows best.

My Wednesday column is a mini-profile of Doug Hiatt, the Seattle attorney whose entire law practice is representing medical-marijuana users. He is a walking think-tank of the law, the chemistry, the medical studies and the social scene of the users. He is voluble, driven, energetic. As I interview him, flashes of anger crackle like mini lightning. What is the matter with people? He is defending sick people—people who are self-medicating with a house plant. Why harass them? They’re ill. A lot of them are terminally ill. Why arrest them and search their places and cause them grief? Why tell them they can’t use this house plant, but have to a pill produced by the pharma industry? Especially when the pill does not work so well, and has worse side effects and costs $10 or more a pill? Hiatt is fired up. Why are people so messed up on this topic? “This just makes me crazy,” he says.

Click below for a Q&A podcast discussion:

Q&A with Bruce Ramsey | An end to reefer madness