The War on Drugs

Check out this article on dishonesty in the drug war.

The truth is that the average THC content of marijuana today is about 4.5 percent, as compared to about 3 percent a generation ago (THC, or tetrahydrocannabinol, is the hallucinatory chemical that is the principal and most active ingredient in marijuana). Thus the claim that today's marijuana is 30 times stronger than the product Bill Clinton claims not to have inhaled exaggerates the situation by approximately 1,500 percent.

I can see absolutely no reason not to legalize marijuana. It certainly is less dangerous than alcohol or tobacco. Further, the War on Drugs, a war against our own citizens, has threatened civil liberties a thousand times more than the patriot act. As for other drugs, I honestly don't know a lot about how dangerous they are, I can certainly see very good arguements for keeping PCP illegal for example. I have a strong suspician though, that since it is so widely known (and obvious) that marijuana is less dangerous than alcohol or tobacco, having it be illegal lowers respect for law in general and thus leads to more hard drug use. Smoking Pot may not be the brightest thing in the world to do, but it is better than a lot of perfectly legal stupid things.