[Wallace T.]

There is something of reverse class warfare in the dope vs. tobacco argument. Cigarette smoking has moved down the socioeconomic ladder since the 1960s. Blacks, Hispanics, and blue collar and rural whites are more likely to smoke than the financially better off and more formally educated. Therefore, tobacco use is subject to social stigmatization, high taxes, and constant nagging from the government and "public service" advertisements. Marijuana users are generally not high achievers, but tend to be family members of high achievers. Certainly marijuana use occurs among poor people as well, but if it were confined to them, this drug would be as socially marginal as crack or meth.

Prohibition of marijuana and other illegal drugs has been an abject failure if the goal was to end its availability in the underground market. Alcohol prohibition was a failure as well. However, the end of alcohol prohibition and the subsequent availability in the open market led to more drinking. Similar results will occur with marijuana.

[Chuckster]

Marijuana users are generally not high achievers,

Yeah., I can't imagine a pot smoker getting elected to congress, or to the mayorship of a major city, or governor of a state, or the presidency...

[ansel12]

Prohibition was a seconds long blip during thousands of years of alcohol being a fundamental leg of Western civilization, drug laws were dealing with a new problem that showed up just recently, for thousands of years it was rejected, it had never penetrated from the Arab/Orient, into white culture.

The drugs laws were just laws, not a duplicate of the strange, alcohol American prohibition.

For true alcohol prohibition, look to the cannabis based cultures.