Marijuana Decriminalization

With the enactment of the Volstead Act in 1919, America
embarked on a social experiment known as Prohibition.
Prohibitionists rejected the idea that people could be trusted to
drink in moderation, arguing that alcohol use inevitably led to
moral corruption and undesirable behavior. Accepting these
premises led Congress to conclude that a federal ban on the
production and sale of alcohol would go a long way toward
reducing crime and addressing a variety of other social problems.
Within a decade, however, Americans discovered that the
criminally enforced prohibition of alcohol produced harmful side
effects. The rise of black markets empowered organized crime to
an unprecedented degree. In some of America's largest cities,
local governments were heavily corrupted by mafia influence. The
black market provided minors with easy access to bootlegged
alcohol, which was frequently of poor quality and unsafe to drink.
Faced with the disastrous consequences of Prohibition, Congress
decided in 1933 to repeal the Volstead Act. Since that time, the
government has implemented the much more successful policy of
focusing law-enforcement efforts on irresponsible alcohol users
who endanger the rights of others.

The example of Prohibition illustrates the importance of
distinguishing between drug use and drug abuse.

http://www.kucinich.us/issues/marijuana_decrim.php

Right on. Dennis's policies are sound and coherent.

My own defense is on libertarian grounds and the first amendment. It is freedom of speech to injest whatever chemical you wish in life for whatever reason. It is freedom of religion to have experiences in altered states of mind, even if these are induced by drugs.

The power of the first amendment is greater than any negatives.... just that argument is too liberal a revision of first amendment thinking to be admissable in mainstream... dennis is using a more realpolitic one... wasting resources... whatever gets there.

He was the resident alchemist and sound guru of the Grateful Dead.

I found his site stumbling around the web and I've been waiting for a thread to post a link to his musings on the politics of pot.

BTW, memo to Dems- You've got millions of untapped potential voters that you'd "turn on" in an instant if you support a platform that decriminalizes pot. It is the right thing to do on so many levels.

http://www.thebear.org/essays.html#anchor433446

Across the spectrum ... from Judges and attorneys to hard-hats and retail slaves, almost all would perk up at the thought of legalization. I know people from each of those walks of life who've endorsed personal use by virtue of their own arrest records publication in the local newspaper.

Why the Establishment doesn't want legalization is easy to see, too. Potheads are peaceful free-thinkers, on the whole. With alcohol as the recreational intoxicant, society is filled with brain-shrunken angry dolts. Which is easier to control?

The BFEE likes pot prohibition for another reason. It's a money-maker. Make it legal, and there's no black market.

it's the wrong thing to do