Well Bruce.... I once listened to a talk radio show and a former narcotic cop saying that the war on drugs was useless and as you say we needed to rethink it. He had a most convincing argument. Then I realized that for a society to servive we needed to draw a line in the sand. This far and no farther. If we aprove one drug then we will need to aprove another and another and another. The danger here is that a hole society waisted on drugs is a non productive society and also is very easy to control. Look at countries that have adopted your thinking. It has blown up in their faces.

Marijuana use should be decriminalized. The legalization of it's sale should be left to the states. It's fair for a state to say what commerce is allowed or not. But as long as people aren't intoxicated while driving or operating machinery, they shouldn't be put in jail for smoking.

I don't buy John Carter's argument. Let employers decide who is productive or not. This business of making society "easy to control" is quatsch. Our society is about freedom, civil liberties, and personal responsibility. It's not about control, or at least it shouldn't.

@John Carter, marajuana is perfectly legal in the Netherlands and they have a higher standard of living than the U.S. as well as greater sustainability. Your 'line in the sand' has been drawn in the wrong place.

While I'm uneasily on the fence about the solution to drug issues, I've got to ask John Carter something. John, you said " Look at countries that have adopted your thinking. It has blown up in their faces".
What countries are those, John? It's easy to pick on those 'danged furriners', but the occasional fact might contribute to the conversation.

I agree with Bruce that tobacco and alcohol are more harmful that marijuana. That isn't a reason to legalize marijuana; rather, it is a reason to outlaw tobacco and alcohol. I know it will never happen, but one can always dream that logic and reason will someday prevail.

I don't particularly care if its legal or illegal, people will do as they wish. What I do think is that it should be treated essentially the same as alcohol. So either ban alcohol or allow marijuana, but don't pretend that one is OK and the other is pure evil.

Parker:
We tried outlawing alcohol and it blew up in our faces. We currently try to deal with a public health issue as a crime issue and all it does is send prices up and give power and money to the worst kind of people.

Carter - I'd like an example of a country that has decriminalized marijuana and had it "blow up in their faces." I've researched this subject a bit and have not seen any examples of this.

The bottom line is that we're spending hundreds of millions of dollars annually to combat marijuana distribution alone. And what has it gotten us? Sure, the marijuana trade has been driven underground, but now even as a grown man I can still obtain a helping of the stuff pretty much on-demand. And of course it was rampant on my high school and college campuses (in Utah, nonetheless!)

Meanwhile, thousands of marijuana users are incarcerated annually at an additional cost of millions of taxpayer dollars, and for what? Many more dangerous criminals are released back onto the streets every day due to overcrowding of our jails...not to mention the many, many other useful things we could be spending all this drug war money on.

I also don't buy Carter's slippery slope argument. There is a difference between heroin and marijuana; we don't have to decriminalize the former just because we decriminalize the latter. There's no logical reasoning there...

Keeping marijuana illegal just gives criminal organizations the money they need to continue on with their criminal enterprises. Nothing quite like tax free capitalism.

Failed war on drugs? How can you measure a what-if game of today's situation versus how things might have been without today's laws?

The problem is that no politician would want to be labeled "soft on crime" so there is no motivation for them to make any change. Quite the opposite, they decide to take sentencing out of the hand of judges and end up letting rapists go before marijuana growers. Who is the danger to society?

At the very least, people should be allowed to grow a limited amount of marijuana for their own personal consumption. But guess what? The government would never go for that because they'd be out of another source of income. And the beer and liquor industry wouldn't like it because it would cut into their profits!

Oh yes, let's pattern ourselves after that powerhouse "the Netherlands" That's one of the funniest one's I've ever heard.

I'm ok if you claim that the war on drugs is a failure. I'd also like to declare that the war on poverty is also a failure. Let's abandon that one too and leave it up to people to do the right thing.

@BeeGee, let me guess. You drive an enormous SUV and have a monster house. USA! USA! Guess I'll see you at the Stadium of Fire - not.

John Carter, apparently you are not very familiar with other countries. Not only The Netherlands has decriminalized marijuana, but many other European countries have done so as well and their problems aren't nearly as bad as ours. This country incarcerates more of its citizens than any other country in the world and approximately half are for non-violent drug offences. Think of all the taxpayer money going towards the costs to arrest them, send them through the court system, and then imprison them. This country spends billions of dollars each year for the war on drugs and it has made not a dime's worth of difference. I think we should legalize them all, regulate them, tax them, and let the chips fall where they may. What would gang-bangers, smugglers, dealers, etc. do without the drug trade? I bet crime would decrease tremendously.

Parker, it sounds like you would like to 'outlaw' everything. That doesn't sound much like a free country to me. Due to thinking like Parker's, the people of this country lose more and more rights every year.

Parker -- how would you feel if religion were 'outlawed'? I'd go for that, but I bet you wouldn't.

Hey just me...only 1 problem with your thinking....the 1st Amendment might be a huge hurdle for you.. but go for it...

Gods gift to man, dont let man keep it from us!

That is all we need is another legal gateway drug. Tobacco, and alcohol are bad enough causing more than enough social and health havoc. Why add marijuana? And if marijuana, why not LSD or other mind altering drugs?