“The goal of legalizing drugs is to bring them under effective legal control. If it were legal to produce and distribute drugs, legitimate businessmen would enter the business. There would be less need for violence and corruption since the industry would have access to the courts. And, instead of absorbing tax dollars as targets of expensive enforcement efforts, the drug sellers might begin to pay taxes. So, legalization might well solve the organized crime aspects of the drug trafficking problem. On average, drug use under legalization might not be as destructive to users and to society as under the current prohibition, because drugs would be less expensive, purer, and more conveniently available.”

It's going to happen regardless what we do so why not control it through a legal system that would help those who become adicted - it would cost the nation far less in crime, life, suffering, and MONEY - it's working well in holland.

I have believed in the legalization of drugs for many years now. I see how politicians, judges and police can be tainted when they can be bought with all the money illegal drugs can buy. Drugs were legal for 100's of years before govm't decided it was too dangerous to let people control their own lives and destiny. Will there be abuse if drugs are legalized? Of course there will be abuse; there always has and always will be abuse. But, the need to escape life is too powerful an urge for many people, why make them criminals for a problem they really have no control over?

I used to be optomistic about the legalizatin of cannabis but my optimism has worn thin over the years. The Major DRUG Companies would not let this happen. I don't believe so anyway.

Legalizing at the least cannabis would be a good idea on the surface as it would move hundreds of thousands of reputable people out of the undeserved category of criminal to the category of people who could run for political office. The down side is that once it was legalized agri-business, most likely the big tobacoo companies, would mass produce it for the marketplace and would have to fertilize it and treat it with the same pathogenic chemicals and pesticides they need to use to grow mono cultures crops on large tracts of land. Arsenic is the base of pesticides used in growing tobacco and its tangential contribution to lung cancer is one of the main reasons that tobacoo is so toxic. At least under the current system pot is grown by independents without these deletorious additives that are a primary factor in the the disease states witnessed in tobacco addicts. In a previous incarnation I was a director for the American Lung Association.

Not to legalize drugs is as stupid as prohibitiion was. The NIJ is totally right.

I am in total agreement with all of you!

Alcohol and nicotine use, despite being legal, cause immeasurable harm. Legalization of tobacco has in no way served to purify the product, and cigarettes are known to contain numerous poisons. Nicotine is also highly addictive. So on what basis could it be assumed that the legalization of cocaine, heroin, or LSD, for example, might be of benefit?

The more people that abuse themselves (with any number of optional poisons, both legal and illegal), the more likely their bodies will be used up and die before they can collect social security and medicare. Smokers are a net benefit to all of us who do not smoke. Also, you can heavily tax all of those otherwise untaxed substances. Consider it a tax on stupidity.

I'm SURE all of that pot is Certified Organic.

Alcohol is simply not sufficiently taxed... and nicotine use is not only insufficiently taxed, but also is insufficiently regulated (as the politicians are in big-tobacco's pockets)... if these were both more heavilly taxed and regulated (e.g. don't subject the non-smoker to your second hand smoke, etc), then they should continue to be legal... as should most (if not all) drug use, sex of any form (between consenting adults, protection of children is still of value... and besides "sex" with children is NOT sex! It is more of a control thing... you know, like big-business imposes upon all of the rest of us).

The spirit is correct, but control and taxation are not required, nor desirable.

really?

David, drugscancausedeath, and any of the other nay sayers, by what lawful authority or inalienable right do you have personally, that you may dictate to me what substances I may or may not consume. If David contacts drugscancausedeath; by what lawful nexus do they have in common that could lawfully dictate what I may consume ? Justice (after a crime - infraction to an innocent third party or property - has been committed) is another topic not related to victimless activities.

I am not quite sure how to rate this quote. Under the de jure Constitutional / natural law system of the established representative republic, no body politic has lawful right or authority to legalize or make illegal what I may or may not personally consume. The criminals of the occupying statist theocracy infesting this land, as law creating gods, allow a false illusion of freedom when legal positivism is the only scope of problem and solution discussed.

This brings to mind jim's oft quoted "Government is a disease masquerading as its own cure." (Robert LeFevre)

Potheads making excuses for their weaknesses.

Check out "LEAP.cc" to see why all drugs should be legal. As to drugscancausedeath, Iowa, water can cause death if you drown or drink to much of it. Household cleaning agents can cause death if you drink them. Almost anything can cause death but that's no excuse to prohibit such items.

There have and always will be two laws that govern behavior, Moderation for the medicine cabinet and respect for the tool box. Of which there has always been to factions at odds. One for the good, the other to manipulate for gain. Let experience be ones guide. Wild things and mild things are the nature within. Herb, a med of old for consoling and soothing. Wine to make the heart merry when it is filled with sorrow. Cackling from the back row, wishing others to tell them right from wrong, Superstitious lot. Lay, men and women need not dictate policy. Nor is it ever right to speak without experience. Then there are only questions not answers. Oppression not liberty. Education starts at home, hope your parents have a good one filled with common sense.