That's all well and good, but the question is "should we legalize pot," not how should we go about doing it?

If voters don't have viable alternative candidates who will repeal the law, all the letter writing in the world won't frighten the viable candidates.

Corporations do not vote, but corporate funding decides who the voters will see. There are full-grown Americans who still don't know there are third parties in America. In short: corporations decide who we can vote for by providing the only viable candidates. That is a far more influential role than voters have!

And you said "That is the way it has always been." of people influencing officials with their votes. But unless you admit that by, "voters" you mean those who could vote in most states prior to 1920 (when women, last of the enfranchised, won suffrage), you are incorrect. Very few Americans have ever had the power to influence their officials in this manner.

Again, I point you to the very founding of America and the creation of our Constitution:

Madison (Emphasis in bold is mine):




John Adams to his wife:




In short, these men sought to limit power to those who were like them in wealth, gender, and station. Their pretty words about liberty and power to the people can't hide the reality of their own personal and political lives.

Yes.

1. Not nearly as dangerous a substance as alcohol which is legal.

2. It has been shown to have many medicinal properties -- making it legal would make it more accessible to those who need it medically.

3. The criminalization of Mary Jane has brought down it's sister palnt -- hemp -- which is an answer to many of our environmental problems.

4. Too many people doing time for something that really isn't all that bad.

In response to lordhelmet's comments about the legalization of marijuana: your answer has indeed answered the question, however, don't you think it's a little rash? If the US, as you suggested builds more prisons to house even more offenders then, well... I'm sure I don't need to tell anyone the numerous economic consequences of doing that! Also, you are flawed in saying that "The same people who sell, distribute, grow, and import pot are the same nefarious characters who deal in harder drugs like cocaine and heroin." There is a vast difference between marijuana and harder drugs. Marijuana is looked at generally by the masses quiet differently than heroin or cocaine. The punishment for possession of marijuana is more lenient than that for harder drugs. That is because marijuana is not nearly as harmful as heroin. Thus, the majority of people dealing in the affairs of marijuana do NOT deal in harder drugs. If a restriction was once again placed on alchohol (as it was earlier on in the 20th century), people would simply run to Canada or Mexico to get their alchohol, PLUS, more people would be occupying jail cells for offending the alchol ban. This is applicable to marijuana in the same way. If it were made legal, our economy would benefit because people would not be occupying half of those jail cells! Chances are, companies would streamline marijuana exactly as they do with tobacco, thus, sadly increasing profit and thus governmental money. So, where are the negative points to legalizing marijuana?

Well, and if it were legal, people could grow it themselves, couldn't they? And that would take care of the whole black market portion of the argument.

Of course, some people would greatly benefit from prisons full of pot heads. In my state, Anderson Hardwood Flooring uses prison labor, and pays a pittance for it. Workhouses full of potheads would greatly benefit companies like these. To the detriment of job seeking Americans, of course, but no one seems to worry about that anymore.

Let's make all drugs legal!!! Let's legalize Heroin, Cocaine, Crack, LSD, etc. Let's make it an individual choice as to if we want to do drugs or not!!! There would be a lot less people in Jail, right? After all - all the drug dealers would be set free!!! And drugs would become a lot cheaper, right??? We could focus all of our resources on much more important pursuits, like the war on terror!!!

Someone is living in a Pollyanna world if they beleve that rhetoric!

If you don't think we have a drug problem now - legalize drugs and see what happens. I hope I'm not around when that grand experiment is started!!! Anyone who has seen the devastating effect of drugs on a persons life wouldn't even DREAM of supporting legalizing drugs!

Drugs do what they are advertised to do. They make one feel better. If they didn't, why would anyone be interested in taking them? Imagine if someone enticed you into smoking a joint, and immediately afterwards you felt deathly ill... I doubt you'd be interested in touching that again!!!

So, recreational use of drugs is a very scary proposition. How about each of us struggle to work on making out lives better through methods that don't involve drugs! Sobriety is a gift - especially to someone who doesn't even realize how nice it is to be sober! Ask someone recovering from addiction issues - then you'll realize how much a joy it is not to have to face that yourself. Imagine someone who has addiction issues having to face the bombardment of advertising, peer pressure, etc - ask an alcoholic, who has recovered from a serious drinking problem.

I am so fortunate to be able to enjoy my life without the necessity of -A- being able to have an alcoholic beverage without being totally consumed by it and -B- being able to make a choice to not drink without it being an issue in my life.

Don't put the temptation of drugs under mine, my children's, my family's, or anyone else I care abouts noses.

By that logic, we should ban paganism. Anyone who has ever seen the devastating effect of going to Hell wouldn't even DREAM of supporting legalized paganism!

Apply your authoritarian principles consistently and you run up against the Constitution.



This is strange. You are arguing for the prohibition of something by listing the good effects.



Right. If someone finds happiness through drugs, let's throw him into prison because he's not conforming to this grand vision of how everybody should pursue happiness.



Ah, but they already are. The War on Drugs has not succeeded in eliminating drug use, but it has succeeded in causing a tremendous expansion of state power and the withering of individual rights. In this case, the cure is worse than the disease.

However, you do have the ability to resist temptation, right?

Weird...I've seen the devastating effects of drugs on a person's life and I dream of supporting legalizing drugs. Oddly enough, I don't think that just because people will ruin their lives over something is reason enough to make it illegal. The person [and family member] of mine whose life drugs temporarily ruined is unfortunate. But, said effect was 100% this person's fault...Calling personal responsibility...Personal responsibility? In addition, there is no reason to belive that more people will do drugs if we legalize it...Prohibition being repealed resulted in the lessening of the countries alcohol drinking.

Right, because otherwise they'll all become Rick James in a split second. Priests will quit and start snorting lines during Mass, school children will shoot up during recess and moral society will degenerate into a dizzy mass of addicts and the like.

CP

I don't know what you mean by this sentence.

Until a certain age, it is a parent's responsibility to control the behavior of their children. If you have such strong feelings about marijuana, then I would think it more productive to educate them according to your views than seeking to remove the temptation. Unless your kids (depending on age) live in a sanatized environment, it is likely, the "temptation" is already there.

People are allowed to ruin their lives. They're allowed to gamble away their life savings, they're allowed to have kids as teenagers, and they're allowed to drink themselves into divorce and bankruptcy. I don't see what makes drugs different. Especially drugs that aren't physically addictive, like marijuana and LSD. Why can't we trust people to just make the right decision and not ruin their lives? Are we so simple-minded, so puerile that we need Big Daddy Washington to keep us from destroying ourselves? If that's the case, then destruction is what we deserve.

FACTS on Marijuana:
http://www.marijuana-info.org/

If the government Legalized Marijuana usage:

1. It would be massively restricted. Probably would have to take it in pill form in public.

2. People certainly would not be allowed to drive or operate heavy machinery, especially around others. There could be a 'Pot intake limit for driving' but that might not work as alcohol is already super limited and pot has more hallucinogenic-psychotic-Euphoric qualities to it. Ex. Allot of people get paranoid on a little Pot. It would be very hard to individually test for this.

3. There are already tight laws against cigarettes indoors in public places. How much more do you think they would be with Pot? Current smoking laws are getting stricter and stricter and they will because there are more 'safer' alternatives in pill form anyway that people are using to curb their addictions

It just doesn't seem like legalizing marijuana would be all that it could be for people. Just more massive restrictions.

FOR MEDICAL MARIJUANA ADVOCATES:

Medical Marijuana sounds like an Oxymoron, LOL, to me because, yes, there are forms of medical heroin and poppy but it isn't raw like the medical marijuana people are smoking. So I think the pill forms I listed below would be better with this type of psychoactive drug. I think psychoactive drugs are best left alone and used by the pharmaceutical industry to discover and use their benefits or for research into more safer medications.

I am more concerned about 'medical marijuana' users smoking it because they have Cancer or AIDS and think marijuana will cure of of these powerful diseases. If I had those diseases I would not want to smoke pot but take the AIDS pills or try to get my Cancer into remission using the various forms of medication, healthy food, or therapy out there. The only real health benefit I can think of is for entertainment value. I hear that people say it calms them down and that is why they are using it to fight various forms of major diseases like Cancer, AIDS and Chronic Back-pain or Pain, but isn't that what cigarette smokers say too? I think the disease issues should be left to the properly tested medication, less invasive foods and herbs, and therapy.

Naturally I eat allot of:

a. Garlic, which heals the skin and body quickly by closing wounds and rashes and stings.
b. Dark vegetables and fruits which produce allot of beneficial Antioxidants that destroy 'free radicals' in the body which cause aging.
c.Apple Juice – seems to get rid of colds and basic sickness for me.
d. Pear Nectar seems to eliminate stress for me.

Try something less invasive them smoking pot if you want to be 'healthy.' When it comes to psychoactive drugs you guys should know that is shaky territory. Don't give me this “Pot makes you healthy” crap. It's just a ploy to try to legalize it or some people want to have no government at all.
Some people want to 'legalize it' and some people want to 'bring down the government' with so called 'Medical Marijuana' but both would be more restrictive for you unless you want to live in a small country island somewhere like Amsterdam, Holland were you can do more experimental things because of the tiny nature of the country. The Dutch government can monitor it with extreme precision although I don't agree with some of it.
Maybe they can make Pot towns in America though like they do in Britain where it's restricted to a town? Like PartyTown U.S.A.
I am also a musician guitarist and a very mellow guy to so don't think I am a tightwad about this but I so science stuff also and am really smart as well....

Check out Satavia or Marinol.

This stuff is only recommended to relieve pain and nothing more i think.

http://www.cannabis.net/sativex/

http://www.survivingparalysis.com/post_detail2.asp?pid=698

Has succeeded in causing tremendous expansion of state power? Withering of rights? Wow...

Let me argue this for a moment, with a bit of logic that most of us can agree upon.
1. The state has a right to mandate the amount of alcohol you can consume and drive, whether you can drink in public, how old you have to be to drink, etc. Most Americans don't argue these points. Does this expand state power?
2. The state has the right to mandate whom can take prescription drugs, who can buy cigarrettes, where you can advertise, etc. How many people argue with this?? Do we want anti-depressants readily available at Walgreens? ?
3. If drugs were legal, who would want their kids to be able to earn some money mowing lawns and be able to run down to the convenience store to buy a package of crack?? How about a line of cocaine after that Friday paycheck?
4. What Americans would want to live next to the store that sold these things? Who the heck would want to live next door to the family strung out on heroin??...

If we're talking about all drugs, where does it stop is my question?

On the other hand, I do believe that Marijuana could be legalized with some regulation. Alcohol is just as detrimental to the lives of Americans, if not worse.

That being said, I do not believe that this logic should apply to other drugs. We could manufacture and refine Marijuana in the fashion that we do tobacco, and regulate it as we do alcohol. The tax revenue would far exceed the cost, and we could take the additional funds and funnel them into schools, etc.

In my mind, we could legalize it by doing the following things effectively:
1. Refine the drug to diminish it's negative effects on health, just as the tobacco industry has.
2. Regulate the sale in a similar fashion to that of alcohol.
3. Tax the drug immensely to assist in limiting consumption (by driving up price), funnel the tax dollars to positive causes, and to pay for the regulatory staffing needed.
4. Make selling it on the streets illegal (just as it is right now).

I believe that this could become a cash cow for the companies producing it, the gov't tax dollars produced, and the jobs created by inventing a legitimate industry. Capitalism at it's best....

I believe Frozny was referring more to things like the asset forfeiture laws, which allow the police to seize the property of people found to have drugs. One may think this to be a good "expansion of state power", but this is not always the case. Even those that have been found innocent or not even charged with a drug-related crime in the first place have lost assets to these laws.

It definitely seems to me like the War on Drugs has thrown some part of due process out the window. If someone planted even a small amount of drugs on your property, then called the cops on you, there is a good chance that your house could be taken (depending on what state you live in). How is this not a tremendous expansion of government power?

By decriminalizing/legalizing drugs like marijuana, the scope (and hopefully with that the amount of money) being poured into the War on Drugs would be reduced, which would also reduce the monetary incentive (for law enforcement) that makes laws like this come into effect. Like they say, follow the money.