I have come out elsewhere in favor of legalizing marijuana for a limited time - three years, say - and studying what gains and losses it causes. . It is my hope that we would learn that it gives a net benefit.

I completely agree. +5

i believe that drugs are evil but should be legalised -taxed and regulated-clinics should be free to all and treatment and incentives for treatment free-the growth and manfacture would have to be restricted and incentives available for ex growers-just like prostitution these things must be brought into the light

What war on drugs? In a war you kill enemy combatants on site. In China drug trafficking is punished by death, oh but that's communist China you say!? Same thing in the Philippines and a host of other democratic countries. They have wars on drugs we just like mislabeling everything so we call are exploitation of drugs a war. +2

It has always been my opinion that drugs should be made legally available to the addicts to prevent them from going to the drug traffickers. With the prescribed does of drugs available to them on a daily basis at reasonable costs, most addicts will be in a position to lead near normal lives. This has been tried out with opium addicts in India and has worked. Accepting the drug addicts as a part of the society would be the first step in this direction. Then by making the drugs in prescribed quantities available to them the drug traffickers could be driven out of business.

We don't need to temporarily loosen regulations on marijuana because we already have an experience to draw upon: Alcohol Prohibition. The War on Alcohol was a complete failure. Just like the War on Drugs. Legalize it, tax it, regulate it, and punish the idiots who can't use it properly.

I entirely agree. Though regulation should be pretty tight. Since it would be a new product, and raw margins would be huge, it should be possible to have 100% traceability: every pill, smoke, syringe traceable back to source. So you could reasonably sell for personal use only of adults who have signed up to the safety warnings. If anybody unlicensed, and particularly underaged, has any, you can trace back instantly to the person who originally bought them. And un-tagged drugs are instant proof of trafficking.

On Afghanistan, the more I read & hear about it, the more I don't have an answer. If we withdraw, Pakistan might fall to the Taliban and get a stronghold in that region - upsurge in terrorist threat but U.S. military lives will be spared. If we legalize poppy/opium/heroin production and sales - what a can of worms THAT is...re financing terrorism, more addictions, deaths in US, etc. If we leave things as is, we further endanger the boys who are already there with little hope for progress. If we send addl troops, we risk US support - ala Vietnam-type protest, we risk lives and US economy trying to finance the operation. No positive solutions I can find. I just don't know.

It sounds good at first glance, but, I think it might well encourage use and eventual addiction. And the illegal trafficking would still exist. Addicts would always want more than their prescribed legal amount. The methadone program has worked only with a few addicts.

As the founder and executive director of the Drug Use Education (DUE) Process Initiative (http://www.DrugUseEducation.org) and a member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) I submitted a proposal to the Obama campaign a year ago and recently to Gil Kerlikowske, the ONDCP director better known as the “drug czar” that includes the following: END THE WAR ON DRUGS …that spawns fear and ignorance which encourage adolescents and teenagers to experiment with substances as the benchmark of adulthood… … that has only exacerbated drug abuse which leads to addiction, dependency, fatal drug overdoses, and most of all: anti-drug disorder… … take our kids off a battlefield where episodes of student gun violence by deranged anti-drug classmates have taken the lives of students and faculty… … that has resulted in SWAT raids on many innocent citizens, with the casualties including infants, toddlers, children of all ages, adolescents, teenagers, women and men of all ages not guilty of anything except being mistaken for drug dealers that don’t need to victimized in such manner… … that has left many patients without the medication they need forcing them to become disabled or self-medicate with illicit street drugs as providers protect themselves from incarceration… … that has turned the general public against law enforcement in our police state… APPLY HARM REDUCTION … that allows the forces on both sides to examine their behavior and stop violence and the excessive (abusive) use of drugs… … that allows authority to consider better approaches to achieve drug control such as: ADOPT REDEFINED FORMS OF DRUG ADMINISTRATION … allowing “use” to indicate what is acceptable according to therapeutic dose and the standard maximum dose (SMD)… … citing “abuse” to have a quantitative value as an indication of excessive doses or time intervals within a given period… … quantitatively showing “addiction” to be related to duration and the relationship of dependency to tolerance and need rather than desire… … demonstrating how “anti-drug disorder (ADD2)” is the effect of propaganda that resolves nothing only constitutes some arbitrary period of delay from 1 second to infinity but increasingly results in shorter periods of delay… … analyzing “drug misuse” as a qualitative form of drug administration that frequently occurs due to the deficiency of a provider-patient partnership in which patients are not permitted the education they need to know more about what they are prescribed… … indicating how “drug free” is a personal choice… PRO-POSITIVE RESEARCH … that investigates why some are drawn to drugs while others aren’t; why some USE drugs responsibly, while others ABUSE drugs recklessly… … that addresses the question of whether drugs are really used “recreationally” or whether they somehow have “medical” benefits…. … leading to methods and formulas to stop the effects of psychoactive substances and those needed for recovery (you wouldn’t buy a car without brakes, and you shouldn’t have to buy a drug without an antidote to stop it or the ability to recover from it – these do exist for most drugs, by the way)… … for the production of safe and pure drugs that are pleasurable but not uncontrollably addictive… … for the invention of electrical stimulation of the hypothalamus that is safe and negates any unwanted side effects that chemicals may cause… DRUG USE EDUCATION … featuring the medical and pharmacological Knowledge along with Discipline training that generates Trust among a population of drug responsible drug users… …mandatory training for K12 students that takes students from the classroom into community and teaching hospitals for evaluation to determine genetic predisposition to addiction and dependency… in addition to teaching students about medicine eliminating any need for students to confront their providers with questions that might be misconstrued as drug abuse and appear on cradle-to-grave electronic medical records (EMR) that today haunt individuals applying for security clearances or prevent them from proper medical care… … that is streamlined for adults and required to obtain a license which enables the adult user to access drugs legally… LEGALIZATION & REGULATION … that puts restrictions on advertising and not on users… … that mandates dosage information on all drugs, including cigarettes and alcohol… … that requires users to be registered with a license to use drugs much the same way that motor vehicle registration works… … that fines violators but allows freedom to use drugs responsibly, generating a source of revenue for the government… … that classifies drugs according to potency, making it less expensive to purchase milder drugs, and more expensive and restrictive to by “hard” drugs with privileged exceptions… TAXATION … that pays for the cost of the system and its employees… … that allows manufacturers to remain competitive… … that makes it worthwhile to government and the public to prevent a black market… During the Obama campaign I was shocked to learn how the resources in the ONDCP and NIDA spend their time! Do you really think anyone in the U.S. Government today really cares to find out what might be good for the general public and the nation more than they are about an easy way to release themselves from blame?

eliminated the suppliers and punish the user