Legalizing Marijuana

Gary Johnson – Legalizing Marijuana: Most Americans Get It, So When Will Our Politicians?:

After Prohibition’s repeal in 1933, kids didn’t start drinking in record numbers. Society didn’t collapse. Today, bathtub gin dealers don’t run amok on playgrounds; microbreweries don’t protect their turf with automatic weapons. Instead, a safe environment to drink was created when the government began regulating and taxing alcohol.

And yet, here we are in 2012, giving Prohibition another shot. For lack of a better word, that’s just stupid.

Today, instead of alcohol prohibition, we’ve got the government’s harmful attempt to prohibit marijuana use. With record federal deficits and states teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, why do we insist on dumping billions of tax dollars into another failed prohibition that is accomplishing nothing other than making criminals out of millions of regular citizens and fueling drug cartels that threaten our security?