Do what you want to do, I say. To yourself, of course, not to others. Don't get drunk and drive, don't get high (too high) and drive.

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"Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes."

"It is horrifying that we have to fight our own government to save the environment."

"Nothing in education is so astonishing as the amount of ignorance it accumulates in the form of inert facts."

So if your son wanted to become a meth addict and spend his entire life trying to make money to buy some more for his fix, you'd be alright with that Threshold?

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"One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors."
~Plato

Yeah I agree with Taliesin. If you care to know, I think the state should protect us from these things. You say you could tax all this but you know you'd just have to pay for the medical bills of the poor addict hobo who couldn't pay for his own treatment.

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Kingdom of Heaven- A king may move a man, a father may claim a son. But remember that, even when those who move you be kings or men of power, your soul is in your keeping alone. When you stand before God you cannot say "but I was told by others to do thus" or that "virtue was not convenient at the time. This will not suffice. Remember that.

Helder Camara- When I give food to the hungry, they call me a saint. But when I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.

Alcohol is a substance that impairs judgment. If a person on alcohol gets in a vehicle, the chances of him or her killing someone is increased. That's my opinion on why it should be made illegal.

There is no moral argument that can be made about marijuana that cannot be made about alcohol.

Note that we are not discussing hard drugs like cocaine and meth, etc.

I do not use any recreational drugs including alcohol so this is not a self serving rationalization to get marijuana legalized.

Good argument. I completely agree and that is why I use that same argument to support the banning of alchohol .

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"One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors."
~Plato

Do they teach history in schools anymore?

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During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.
-George Orwell

Yeah, a lot of folks made money off of prohibition. Al Capone and JFK's daddy. Who's making money off of today's prohibition? War on drugs keeps prices and profits high. Lot's of jobs. Exotic toys. Easy money. Saw American Gangster the other night. Legalize it and sin taxes could pay for a lot of treatment centers for addicts, who wouldn't have to steal so much or turn so many tricks, and that is what I would like to see-less stealing and fewer tricks. Take away the price supports.

The "history" argument doesn't prove anything except that people throughout the history of this nation have proven to be selfish to the point of encouraging and supporting criminal activity and even the mob itself... Is that the history lesson you want schools to teach? The prohibition itself wasn't the problem. The problem was that selfish alcoholics and anti-prohibitionists were willing to feed the fire of the mafia in order to satisfy their personal addictions... That's the only truth you can get out of the so-called "failure" of the prohibition, when really it was the failure of anti-prohibitionists and alcoholics alike to recognize that their selfish idiocy was the cause of the actual problem. I keep hearing this "society should legalize marijuana because people are going to smoke it anyway" bullshit argument, but the only basis for that argument is self-serving nonsense...

Society isn't just going to legalize marijuana because some pot-smoking rejects are too foolish to accept that their behavior is unstable, risky, and their intoxication and impairment puts not only themselves but those around them at risk... Society isn't going to simply give into that kind of bullshit. That argument just doesn't work.

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"Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country."
-John F. Kennedy

"Education begins the gentleman, but reading, good company and reflection must finish him."
-John Locke

"What worries you, masters you."
-John Locke

Yeah and who was it was that payed the mobsters the money to fuel their criminal empires? People who were selfish, greedy and immoral enough to crave a self-serving substance that was hazardous to the health of themselves and those around them. Who were those people again? Oh that's right... Those were the anti-prohibitionists/alcoholics... Isn't that an interesting little paradox. So the anti-prohibitionists were the ones supplying the mafia and criminal empires with their profit because they were the ones initially to be selfish enough to want to break the prohibition laws. Very interesting. That's a little something called irony. And who is it that supplies drug gangs and modern criminal organizations based on illegal drug trafficking with their income? Oh that's right. A strangely parallel group of people--anti-prohibitionists/drug addicts (those selfish enough to break the drug laws initially). So who is to blame for ALL the trouble? Drug users. Society's mandates are entirely reasonable, they are in place to preserve the rights and reasonable safety of the common good. The individualistic and often times anarchical mindset of the drug addict/anti-prohibitionist tends to bypass the logic of this issue.

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"Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country."
-John F. Kennedy

"Education begins the gentleman, but reading, good company and reflection must finish him."
-John Locke

"What worries you, masters you."
-John Locke

Neither alcohol nor marijuana are inherently harmful to people around the user. It depends on the person using it, where it is being used, and other factors. If somebody uses either of these things responsibly, it is unlikely that they will harm another person.

You seem to be arguing based upon the principle of the matter rather than what is pragmatic. When it comes to policy, I think it is very important that we do what is pragmatic. There are far more selfish and stupid people out there than there are jail cells, and we already spend more than anybody else in the world on incarcerating people. Therefore, it is important that we put serious criminals in jail and not mere losers like most drug addicts. If they use the drug irresponsibly, then we should punish them for putting others at risk just like we do drunk drivers. Of course, you seem to perceive "great risk" in marijuana use just by itself, even in a responsible setting, while anybody who has had much exposure to potheads would know that they are not a danger to anybody if they stay at home.

You are not actually talking about "Anti-prohibitionists" here. No doubt, some people are against prohibitions because they want to consume the substance prohibited, but you should not lump those people into the same category as law-abiding citizens who oppose prohibitions for pragmatic or moral reasons. Remember that myself, and many others, have no interest in consuming marijuana, but we feel that it does more harm than good to prohibit it.

Well actually, anti-prohibitionist would be synonymous with anti-mob, because it was the context of prohibition that allowed the mobs to flourish. Once legal alcohol became available, there was no reason to buy alcohol from the mob anymore. Ultimately, you could blame the alcoholics, but it would not do any good in terms of forming a policy that does the most good for society.

For reasons mentioned in other threads, the harm of incarcerating a drug user exceeds the benefit of removing them from society. Decriminalization would at least allow us to make money off their "selfishness" (as if most people out there aren't mostly selfish).