Lawmakers to introduce bill to legalize marijuana


I am no longer a pot smoker (I stopped well before I got out of High School and joined the Army over 20 years ago). I fully believe that the "War on Drugs" has failed and would like to see this to go further.

That being said, Republicans and Democrats in general don't support the ending of the Drug War. This action has sealed Ron Paul to defeat, not that I thought he had much of a chance anyway.

Drugs haven't gotten any healthier. They're still "bad." It's virtually impossible to convince people en masse to legalize an already illegal "bad."

Alcohol is "bad"
Tobacco is "bad"
Spending billions of dollars on a policy that only makes the situation worse is also bad.

I have been saying for years, take the profit motive out of it and the drug problem will start going away very quickly. Why would someone sell drugs if they couldn't make any money doing it? If someone could get their intoxicant from the government for cheap (or hell, free if they would attend some sort of class about what the drugs did to the body...) then the amount of drug related crime would drop dramatically. The amount of money required to prevent, prosecute, and punish would drop dramatically.

Would we probably have a "lost group" of people that would abuse the system? Yes. Do we already have a "lost group" of people that have wasted their life on drug addiction? Yes. Why can't we get in front of this and stop new people from getting hooked?

Hey, I ain't disagreeing. There are some huge incentives to overhaul our drug policy. But that doesn't change the fact that without a strong reason why people should actually use drugs (hi, medical marijuana), people won't be motivated to force a change.

Again, it's not that I think the status quo is the best case. This is just a comment on the nature of politics and group decision-making.

Having never smoked pot myself, I still think it should be legalized. Even after legalization, I still wouldn't smoke it.

I think the current effort is the right idea. If it's an illegal drug, then it'll stay illegal -- but if it's medicine, that's another story. Technically, possessing oxycodone without a prescription is illegal, too, and you used to need a prescription for a lot of drugs that are over-the-counter now.