[SampleMan]

First and foremost thank you for reading my posts before assuming you knew my arguments. That's a hard thing to do, and I'm quite often guilty of "getting to the point" only to find that I misidentified the posters real point.

Did you read my #102?

I believe your concerns are valid. To me, the obvious solution to this conundrum is to treat marijuana and other common plants as beneath the dignity of the law. The law should simply not deal with weed, mushrooms, and such.

The problem with this approach as I see it, is that most all drugs are natural. Penicillin is just a natural mold spore.

If I were pushing legalization, which I'm not (just not one of my irons in the fire), I would push to put the laws back into the hands of the states and then let open debate and common sense prevail.

I think that by federalizing everything we have lost one our strongest advantages in government. That being the ability to conduct 50 different experiments in what works and what doesn't. Getting off of drugs for a second, look at education. If the states had free reign, we could let the blue states try throwing money at it, and let the red states set academic requirements and merit pay. Soon it would be very clear what model works, and what doesn't. Indeed, we might find that different things work in different places.

If you live in Vermont and the citizens of Alabama don't want to legalize pot, what business is it of yours? The reverse of course is also true. Now with antibiotics, clear harm from another state's actions becomes real, so I do think it becomes a federal issue.

[headsonpikes]

Thank you for raising the level of civility on this thread.

I said, "I believe your concerns are valid. To me, the obvious solution to this conundrum is to treat marijuana and other common plants as beneath the dignity of the law. The law should simply not deal with weed, mushrooms, and such."

You replied, "The problem with this approach as I see it, is that most all drugs are natural. Penicillin is just a natural mold spore."

I should have explicitly stated 'unprocessed' plant material. Extracts or other refined or transformed products such as THC, heroin, cocaine, and penicillin are drugs like any other, as you point out, and must be regulated for purely utilitarian reasons, but not from some posture of moral improvement of the people by the state.