Legalize it, already

Not going to happen. Our federal government will not listen to the will of the people. All 50 states could pass decriminalization bills, and it wouldn't change the fed position a bit.
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The prison guard unions, the beer and wine distributors, and big pharma don't pay all that money to congress for nothing.

Look out, Klein's phone is about to be tapped and his emails read.
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I mean by the FBI in addition to the NSA.

sorry Joe, but if you expect to get comments to your post, you're going to have to take a page out of KT's book, and demand the death penalty for Phelps or something equally ridiculous as suggesting Mitt Romney for "health care czar"

hear hear! but tell me there would be the same reaction had the photo been of lebron james.

if it's going to happen, it'll be for medical purposes. somehow i don't think michael phelps qualifies for that.

Won't happen. Too sensible. Too many sanctimonious people for whom this is an easy "moral" issue.

Since woodworking is one of my hobbies, marijuana and power tools are less than an ideal combination. Getting randomly tested for drugs is also an incentive not to partake. However, it's ridiculous to incarcerate casual users. Taking someone who is employed and paying taxes and turning them into a sinkhole for taxpayer dollars makes very little sense. The alcohol industry should be worried. How many people know how to make Jack Daniels? How many people can figure out how to stick a seed in a flower pot?

Dirty Hippies showing up everywhere.

I hate to burst the baby boomer knee jerk reaction ("legalize it") bubble, but its increasingly apparent that marijuana poses serious risks to people who are predisposed to developing certain mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia. (just google "marijuana, risk and schizophrenia" for heaven's sake).

The idea that it is a "harmless" drug has been under assault by studies developing and proving this hypothesis for years, and without a complete understanding of how the drug effects the dopamine system prior to legalization, it would be criminally irresponsible to pass that legislation.

Let's get our attitudes out of 1968 and into the serious work the medical researchers are doing.

I just hope Phelps didn't see that Cash4Gold ad during the Super Bowl. If he gets a powerful jones for more of that pot he might send some of those medals in!

"Marijuana should be legalized and taxed," thought Joe Klein as he closed the door to his office, opened the top drawer in his desk, and extracted the small wooden pipe that he had picked up during the '92 campaign. Or was it '88?
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Moments later, as his tensions faded away and he randomly perused the WaPo.com website, Joe found his eye fortuitously falling on the headline to a Kathleen Parker column. A new blog post began to crystallize...

But alcohol, that's not harmful in the least to a persons health and should of course be legal. America as a whole is still not ready to re-examine, let alone overhaul it's drug laws. Despite the total failure of the War on Drugs.

I hate to burst the baby boomer knee jerk reaction ("legalize it") bubble, but its increasingly apparent that marijuana poses serious risks to people who are predisposed to developing certain mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia. (just google "marijuana, risk and schizophrenia" for heaven's sake).
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just as soon as they do studies on the incidence of schizophrenia and chocolate, eggs, and jujubees, I'll start worrying, okay?

wbrain, I found studies that were interpreted to show that use *by adolescents* could interfere with brain development. We're talking about adult use, here.
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Still, rather than legalizing it, how about just decriminalizing personal use for now? A sort of gateway law.
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Also, I'm worried. Kathleen Parker is starting to make sense to me. Of course, the revelation that she's a closet pot head might have something to do with it.

Sorry, I forgot that boomers don't worry about these issues until the New York Times tells them too.

Biiliecat, so far, yes, it is in adolescents and I apologize for not making that distinction.

>>>marijuana poses serious risks to people

Not remotely as lethal as alcohol or tobacco, regarding both of which we trust adults to decide for themselves in weighing the risks against the pleasures.

If you think we should bring back Prohibition and completely outlaw cigarettes (and declare "war" on the producers, distributors, and consumers of both), then at least you are consistent albeit in holding a laughably unpopular and untenable view. But the idea that marijuana is in a category of its own, and ought to be treated differently from alcohol and tobacco, can only be motivated by cultural prejudice as there's no scientific basis whatsoever for it.

Phelps' use just shouldn't have been news. Apparently it's okay to be 60 and to have experimented when you were 23, but it's not okay to be 23 and experiment. What a buncha puritans we apparently are.

To clarify, my comment about puritans is about our culture and its appetite for the scandalous. Not a comment about those here who are concerned about the risks to people of marijuana's use, which I share (didn't share that concern when I was 23 though).

What kathy said.
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This country has to stop being so freakin' hypocritical. Seriously. We permit the Afghanis to sell to support their country and foster a drug trade in Iran, but we want to criminalize personal use here in the US. Further, from all apparent evidence, it appears that the alcohol and tobacco lobby are the only folks in the country who think this outright prohibition is working. Imagine that?

" .. It's costing the society way too much in terms of law enforcement and hypocrisy. .. "

huh?

eh!
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So does porn and pedophilia cost the society way too much in terms of law enforcement ...
And billion dollar crimes - like the SEC-Maldoff ponzi schemes.

In fact, 'crime' in general ... it costs too much in law enforcement. Decriminalize it? In fact we may thus never need 'law enforcement' and hypocrisy again! Ever.

Bad idea. Poor reasoning.

The thoroughly unqualified, terrorist fraternizing, communiity organizer and clueless socialist should nominate this dazed, bloodshot-eyed stoner and irrelevant fool named Kathleen Parker to head HHS. She's adored by the Washington press corps and the rest of the bong addled community.

Let's get our attitudes out of 1968 and into the serious work the medical researchers are doing.
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I'm trying to...but I'm hungry, man.

Easy, textee, you're harshing my mellow.

kathy;
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It's not that we are puritans. It's just that marijuana is still a useful tool for the bigots who make up the majority of America's law-enforcement storm troopers to use to oppress undesirables.
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The true message behind Harry Anslinger's propaganda campaign was "Help us keep the n***ers and sp*cs down." Then in the sixties, they added "hippies" to the list. Now, with Medical Marijuana being prescribed for AIDS patients, they have added "f***ots" to the list of those they can joyously use the laws to oppress.
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Criminal involvement in the marijuana business is an iatrogenic disease, and the forces who make their living enforcing our marijuana laws love it that way.
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Those ignorant of the history of Federal criminalization of marijuana should review it here.