The War on Drugs gives the USA an excuse to build international drug task forces that constantly meddle in the affairs of other countries. Ever wonder why the USA has a military base near just about every drug hot-spot in the world? Ever wonder why the USA does such contradictory things as encouraging Afghans to replant their opium crops?

Simple truth: The most devastating and long-lasting side effect of marijuana use is a criminal record. The most dangerous, immediate consequence of marijuana use is the machine gun-toting, para-military, drug-nazi that will kick down you door, shoot your dog and steal your freedom for possessing marijuana.

The most dangerous and the most expensive aspect of marijuana use is the prohibition of marijuana use. So all the rest of you can argue back and forth about marijuana making you stupid, causing cancer, corrupting kids, turning you into a heroine addict, etc. Keep turning a blind-eye to the elephant in the room: 20,000,000 marijuana-related arrests and counting. All expenses covered by the fear and ignorance of the Great American flock.

I simply can’t understand why we don’t talk openly about the lies and interests behind some very bad laws… They don’t help our society at all and yet we don’t try to make them better.
For example in 1929, they ran short films saying that if you smoke it, you will kill people.
They faked scientific studies, and told lies to the population… By no means can we call this education.
Mary should watch “The History Of Marijuana” for a deeper understanding of this “Culture War” she talks about… Because the legalization is not about being able to smoke pot, it’s about freedom and education. Let’s be free, and let’s try to educate ourselves while being free. Lies and propaganda never made a good education for the young!!

( you can find the documentary on youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sknoKWsVlAA)

Comparing it to alcohol makes about as much sense as comparing it to pumpkin seeds. The short and long term use of alcohol is exponentially greater than short term or chronic use of marijuana. Alcohol can kill you acutely and over the long haul, for example. The same isn’t true about marijuana.

Ms. Grabar’s description of chronic marijuana users is folly. The long term cannabis users that I know and have met over the past four decades are self made millionaires, entrepreneurs, lawyers, judges, neuro-surgeons, nurses, writers, reporters, engineers, teachers and all types of other professionals.

Although smoked, marijuana has none of the afflictions associated with tobacco. In fact, research out of UCLA suggests that THC, the psycho-active ingredient in marijuana, may have a protective effect on the lung.

Finally, prohibition has been a complete and utter failure on multiple levels. So what we are left with at the end of the day is a ban on a substance that was legal for more than 150 years, made illegal based on lies (rent the movie, “reefer madness” sometime to get a hint of what I’m talking about here) for the financial gain of a couple of very wealthy businessmen. A ban that has significantly strengthened organized crime, cost billions of dollars a year to enforce while creating criminals of otherwise law-abiding citizens, while not allowing us to utilize one of the great plants (hemp) ever grown on God’s green earth. Not too smart an idea from where I sit.

I’ll leave the encroachment on our civil liberties, and the role of government intrusion in our lives for another day.

LIBERTY, as I and as John Stuart Mills defines it, is the individuals right to do anything at all they want as long as they do not infringe on the LIBERTY of others. The definition thus offered also includes this additional qualification. For those incapable of knowing how to exercise responsibly the GOD given right of LIBERTY, either because of mental incapacity (disease) or of insufficient age to be considered by society as being able to assume those responsibilities (maturity/age of majority/children), we should put laws in place to protect these categories of the vulnerable among us.

So David gets close to making the above in his argument but does not finnish the job. Instead both he and Marg Graybar take a divergent path and begin discussing the medical ramifications of taking drugs as well as the legal violence issues surrounding the use of drugs. I do not condone taking drugs as mentioned in the articles or the abuse of alcohol either, just for the record. However none of these issues addresses LIBERTY as a right of individuals but attempts to justify why we must surrender our LIBERTY so that others can be saved from doing dangerous things as society/culture defines them. None of this was included in the concept of the protection of individual/personal LIBERTY in our founding documents.

A far better approach is to enact laws about all drug use, or any other actions of individuals which would hurt or impair anyone elses LIBERTY at the expense of that individual exercising their LIBERTY.

This approach gives us the maximum LIBERTY in our lives while providing a remedy for those who in exercising LIBERTY impede on others LIBERTY.

Anyone, who is mentally and legally competant to make a judgment to take an action, and wants to destroy themselves as a free individual they should be allowed to do so as long as it does not violate anothers LIBERTY!

We truly then really do have LIBERTY!