[Hoot Gibson]

I have many friends that only smoke pot, and have never touched anything else.

Unless you know nobody who has smoked pot and then graduated to more dangerous drugs, then you are not disagreeing with TRT. But what gives you or anybody else the right to determine what is a "good" recreational drug and what is a "bad" recreational drug for all Americans? There are people who use cocaine and other "hard" drugs, who manage to hold jobs and pay taxes. The same arguments that apply to making marijuana use legal applies to any other illegal drug.

Marijuana is a gateway drug. Not everybody walks through the gate and uses more dangerous drugs, but a person who breaks the law to use marijuana is more likely to break the law to use other drugs than somebody who never steps through the gate. If marijuana use is legalized, then some other illegal drug will become the new gateway drug of choice.

I do not see how anybody can advocate legalizing marijuana use on a personal liberty basis and oppose legalizing any other drug. It reminds me of the argument in favor of gay marriage that says marriage has always been between two adults, so gay marriage is okay but polygamy is wrong. Saying that marijuana use should be legal but harder drugs should not be legal is like saying that it is okay if a single girl gets a little bit pregnant. If it should be legal for a person to alter their state of consciousness by smoking, injecting, or ingesting a foreign substance into their body, then it should be nobody else's business what that foreign substance is, provided that they alone suffer the consequences of their own stupidity.

I am in favor of the legalization of drug use because I support the law of natural selection. Let us identify the willingly weak links of our species and remove them from civilized society. If somebody claims that they can be a productive and responsible citizen and smoke weed, then let us give them an opportunity to prove it...or not. I am tired of paying for the revolving door prison system that sometimes frees violent criminals to make room for perpetrators of victimless crimes like drug users and prostitutes.

(I know that one can make arguments that such crimes are not victimless because they impact spouses, children, etc., but I am speaking in terms relative to violent offenses here.)