Hear hear! It's about time to end this ridiculous crusade against pot, one of the most innocuous plants on Earth. Further it's also about time we realized that prohibition doesn't work; regulating/taxing it and prohibiting the sale to minors (IOW treating it exactly as we do tobacco and alcohol) are the correct answer.

More prisoners, more money for the CDCr budget. All punishment and no rehabilitation. You get what you pay for, and the State lawmakers just don't get it. They are not only "tough on crime" they are "tough on our pocket books".

Good for the Judges for their brave decision to release prisoners because the State parole panel does not have an ounce of common sense, and reform is not in their vocabulary.

Sentencing laws must be changed. Stacking charges to gain a life sentence is rediculous. Isn't one crime enough? Why do we have to charge a person with 20 charges for one crime?

The house of cards are falling because the State is bankrupt from their overcrowding of prisons and the large employment ranks of prison personnel. Maybe one of these days the punishers will learn that you cannot torture a person into being a good citizen.

Not a particularly original idea but one option might be to decriminalise drug use, all 'illegal'drugs, starting with bud. We then purchase all the Opium, Coca, Grass etc. directly from the source, paying the growers significantly more than they now receive thereby suporting small local farmers. What can't be used to process into 'legitimate' pharmaceutical products and supplied to needy patients world wide according to their ability to pay, or provided to those dependent on currently illicit compounds, could be stored in local, regional centers in anticipation of the Armageddon on the near horizon unless we finally get our shit together. These stockpiles could then be distributed free to all those who wish to go out on a cloud of euphoria rather than choke on a cloud of toxic dust.
If marijuana was legalised for example, it could be sold like booze, quality could be controlled and guaranteed, and it would generate revenue through profit on sales and taxes. The obvious Federal Agencies to implement and oversee this project would be the CIA and Military Special Forces, after all they have extensive hands on practice in facilitating the drug trade for devious and nefarious purposes. This could give them an opportunity for redemption, turning over a new leaf and beating their bayonets into bongs, end of problem. Of course we all know how skilled and proficient the FDA is in ensuring the safety and purity of the products they have jurisdiction over, so there may a need for a new agency for that purpose. However I am sure there are many experienced users out there who would be only too willing to act as guinea pigs and testers before anything was released for common consumption. Damn, I just dropped the joint in my wine.

There once was a man on his deathbed who, at the very end of his life, called his wife to his side and said to her, “Dear, before I leave this earth, there is something that I really feel I have to tell you. For a number of years now, I have been having an affair with the woman who lives across the street. I do not mean to hurt your feelings, but I think you had a right to hear it, and hear it from me.” The wife thought for a moment and then replied, “That’s okay; I know. That’s why I poisoned you.”

In so many ways, we have been poisoning ourselves by the policy we have chosen to deal with the critical problem of drug use and abuse. As I have always acknowledged, many of these drugs are certainly dangerous and harmful, but there are also separate and distinct harms that are directly caused by their prohibition. These additional harms might be tolerable if they actually stemmed the flow of drugs into our communities. But the opposite is true. Our drug laws have simply failed.

Our country’s attempts to combat drug use and abuse, and all of the crime and misery that accompany them, through the criminal justice system is not working. Drug policy reform is one of the most important issues facing this country and the so called “War on Drugs” is one of our country’s biggest failures.

I have reached these conclusions after spending nearly 20 years as a Police Officer in the State of California. I have seen firsthand that we are wasting unimaginable amounts of our tax dollars, increasing crime and despair, and severely and unnecessarily harming people’s lives, particularly our children’s, by our failed drug policy. In short, I have seen that our current drug policy is a failure, and I simply cannot keep quiet any longer.

We have been following essentially the same Drug Prohibition policy for many decades, and it has given us the worst of all worlds. Today there are more drugs available in our communities, and at a lower price, than ever before. We have greatly expanded the number of prisons in the United States, but all of them are overflowing. As a direct result of the enormous amount of money available from illicit drug sales, the corruption of public officials and private individuals in our society has increased substantially. We have a much higher incidence of diseases, such as hepatitis and AIDS, caused by the use of dirty needles, than most countries in the world. The “War on Drugs” has resulted in the loss of more civil liberties protections than has any other phenomenon in our history. Instead of being shielded, our children are being recruited into a lifestyle of drug selling and drug usage by the current system. And revolutionaries and insurgents abroad are using money procured from the illegal sale of drugs to undermine legitimate governments all over the world. We could not have achieved worse results if we had tried.

Drug Abuse is Bad…The Drug War is Worse!
LAW ENFORCEMENT AGAINST PROHIBITION
Criminal Justice Professionals Speaking Out Against the War on Drugs
www.askleap.org

Have we as a society in California really lost our morals to this point? Have we no more values to strive for, or goals to be reached? This is insanity! Putting a tax on this leaf is like putting a price on our dignity and intelligence. What ever happened to hard work and integrity to get ahead? Now all potheads care about is getting high!
Marijuana is not a joke and it destroys lives and ruins families. And placing it in the same context as alcohol is ignorant!
The war on drugs has been declared a failure because it has failed to meet it's expectations. I don't disagree with that, it's a fact. But do we just give up after this? Do we cash our chips after one bad draw?
My answer is no. As long as there is a will to clean up our society there is a way. It will just take more serious measures and people to start realizing just how good our lives are in America despite a sagging economy!

Two groups are stopping the legalization of pot; the liquor companies who want to maintain their highly profitable monopoly of selling the only legal drug to get intoxicated and the pharmaceutical companies who dont want people drinking cannabis tea instead buying their ultra expensive pharmaceutical drugs with dangerous side efforts. Both group's drugs are more dangerous than pot. These drug pushing companies pay million$ to our politicians to keep their drugs legal and pot illegal. Politicians remember how the tobacco companies retaliated against Al Gore for speaking out against them and find it easier to just take the money.

Really!?!?!?,

To imply that legalization of cannabis is an affront to our moral values is itself an affront to said values.

What is morality? Morality is, at the most basic level, a set of guidelines meant to help us understand how to love one another and to keep us from harming our neighbors.

Consuming a substance does not make us morally-aligned one way or the other. Jesus, a man who knew the meaning of basic morality, said himself that nothing we take into our bodies defiles us. It is our actions which either defile or redeem us.

You are skewing the idea of morality by your words. It's no wonder why people have come to question morality itself. Strip morality down to its basic meaning; do not pollute it. When we define morality as something more than what it really is we start seeing more people who are confused about its meaning.

Squeaky wheel gets the oil. The only thing keeping cannabis from being legalized are the closet smokers who remain the silent majority by not participating in the political process such as contacting their representatives and expressing their views. Many have already stepped up to the plate but more have not. They seem overly content that the activists can handle it so they elect to sit by the side lines in a daze of wishful thinking.

I respectfully disagree. I think the idea of legalized drugs is unworkable, and poorly reasoned. I wrote a considerable post on my blog about the topic, and I'd urge you and your readers to take a
look if you want to see a different perspective. You can find the post here:

http://thefrankspot.blogspot.com/2009/04/legalizing-drugs-zero-percent-solution.html