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This topic has been touched on here before. I came across this article in Time and thought it was interesting.
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Interesting article -- A while ago I wrote the following in another thread and I still have not made up my mind:
I would like to review the report commissioned by the Cato Institute.Even though it no will doubt encounter sharp resistance from some quarters, I agree that the drug laws in this country need to be reexamined simply because the “War on Drugs” is not working and has never worked.
KC Shox is correct to point out that one of the major issues will be the perception that marijuana is a “gateway” drug which inevitably leads to an individual to move on to “harder” drugs like heroin and cocaine. But I am no longer convinced that this argument has much merit. In my judgment that argument is on the order of saying that every rapist began by masturbating. General rules based on individual victims are usually unwise. And although there is a perfectly respectable case against using marijuana, the penalties imposed on those who reject that case, or who give way to weakness of resolution, are very difficult to defend. If all our laws were paradigmatic, imagine what we would do to anyone caught lighting a cigarette, or drinking a beer. Send them all to Guantanamo?
Legal practices should be informed by realities. These are enlightening, in the matter of marijuana. There are approximately hundreds of thousands of marijuana-related arrests made every year. I would wager that most of these involve nothing more than mere possession of small amounts of the drug. However, this exercise costs us, the taxpayer, billions per year in direct expenditures alone. Despite the enforcement of these laws, the impact on the drug “situation” appears to me to be minimal.
I don’t know what the answer is and I don’t know if I approve of legalization (speaking only to marijuana); but the major obstacle to change, is the politician's fear of endorsing any change in existing marijuana laws. And I am not sure that will change. But in the end maybe we should regulate it, control it, tax it, and make it illegal only for minors.
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