America's War on Drugs

[kılıç_mehmet]

So, in speaking with my in-laws last night I found out that my mother-in-law is currently using medical marijuana. Apart from this being utterly hilarious, what I would give to get to see her high, ah, it makes me smile :-) it makes me wonder if it's about time for a serious overhaul of the US's drug policy. I mean, if my in-laws, who are in their 70's, typically democrats, but rather socially conservative (my father-in-law was a minister and is a very proud tea-totaler who has never had a drink), if they support medical marijuana, why not just legalize it already?
Then I saw these on the Huffington Post:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rob-kampia...39670.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-br...52870.html

So what say you? Legalize or no?

Well, legalizing marijuana for personal usage could be a good thing, I mean it's not illegal to smoke marijuana in Turkey for example, but selling, growing and possession to a certain amount is a punishable crime. I believe that the US should follow a similar policy. This won't affect the number of marijuana users, and certainly will not motivate people to use drugs.
But legalizing marijuana in terms of sale, possession of high amounts and of course production should stay illegal, as legality brings with it a lot of unwanted consequences, such as social breakdowns.

People who want to speak of heavy taxation and revenues for the government from the drug money are fools, who put short term "benefits" without thinking of long term damages, like true capitalists.
Drugs have been fought in many countries before the US war on drug was fought. China, with it's multitude of people was struck by opium, which led the government to seize opium and destroy en masse, while the imperialist Britain sought to re-establish this lucrative trade.

I'm sure if marijuana sale(and with it, sales of harder drugs will follow) and production is made legal, I'm sure we'll see a lot more opium wars in the future.