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I have gone through the medical and policy evidence on marijuana in detail twice over the years. When I did so several months ago, I was surprised to see how strong the evidence against marijuana is now as compared with three decades ago. The case against marijuana legalization is strong on the facts and policy considerations and cannot be credibly rejected on airy generalizations energetically asserted and constantly repeated.

In essence, due to individual differences in biochemistry, some people suffer no harm or little harm from marijuana, while a significant slice of the population is vulnerable and suffers lasting damage from even relatively minor use. Teenagers are especially at risk for major, lifelong damage, as are those with preexisting mental problems or a predisposition to them.

There is no test today or to be available in the near future to allow us to tell in advance what the individual consequences of marijuana use will be. As a policy matter, the costs of wide marijuana use fall widely on the population and cannot be isolated and imposed solely on users. For all the defects and problems of marijuana prohibition, it is better than than legalization.

And it is illogical and unhistorical to take broad pronouncements from Jefferson and others in the early era of the country about individual liberty as support for pro-marijuana policies today. Until the 1960's, the US had traditional, button down mores, with drunkenness regarded as a vice and a character failing subject to legal penalties. A society that routinely put drunks into the stocks, jail, or fined them would not have embraced marijuana smoking or that its should be legal if it became widespread.

Think about it. As silly as "Reefer Madness" now appears, it reflected traditional US values and was produced, promoted, and viewed by a population that on the whole knew more about Thomas Jefferson and the founders and honored them more in the observance than we do today.

Marijuana legalization is not gaining momentum. I do not expect it to prevail. In a decade or two, I expect better testing and treatment technologies and ongoing generational and cultural changes to lead to far less drug use than there is today. My guess is that, assuming a continuity of our country and its way of life, by the middle of this century marijuana smoking will be a trivia question, just as most people today cannot tell you laudanum is.

Smoking marijuana is trivial and that's why I took the discussion to a wider perspective. This relates to virtually every type of harm that can be inflicted on one person from another. If you think you have been harmed by Bob take Bob to court before an impartial jury and do your best to convince the jury that Bob harmed you. You do that in order to get restitution for your pain and suffering that Bob inflicted on you.

You can take Bob to court regardless of his actions so long as you think his actions caused you harm. His actions may be that he punched you in the face, or he stole your car, or broke into your house, or sat on his porch and drank a beer, or sat on his porch and smoked pot, or called you a nazi pinko fagot.. If Bob harmed you you have every right to take him to court.

You don't need laws prohibiting each one of those acts. If Bob has it in his mind to do any of those acts he will do them regardless of the laws. As we have seen violent criminals don't abide gun-control laws. People that smoke pot don't abide marijuana prohibition laws. Nor did people abide alcohol prohibition laws. So the real issue is for you to gain restitution via an impartial jury awarding you damages.

With all the people that smoke marijuana society has not run headlong into destruction as parasitical elites proclaimed it would. Society wasn't headed for destruction before marijuana prohibition Yet the drug gangs turf wars and non-violent drug offenders sitting in jail and their broken families is the destruction caused by marijuana prohibition.

And it is illogical and unhistorical to take broad pronouncements from Jefferson and others in the early era of the country about individual liberty as support for pro-marijuana policies today. Until the 1960's, the US had traditional, button down mores, with drunkenness regarded as a vice and a character failing subject to legal penalties. A society that routinely put drunks into the stocks, jail, or fined them would not have embraced marijuana smoking or that its should be legal if it became widespread.

I agree that the degredation of morality is a major problem in society today. I would differ, however, that this is an argument in favor or prohibition. Indeed, I would argue the opposite: passing and enforcing laws without widespread support for them does far more to undermine society than would the lack of such laws.

Until recently, there wasn't much need for large numbers of law-enforcement personnel because such personnel would receive the support of nearly the entire citizenry. In a sense, nearly everyone was a part-time cop who might sometimes provide assistance at a second's notice (literally: cop sees crook running down the street and signals for anyone who can to stop him). Citizens saw the police as their friends and allies, and were thus generally more than happy to help out when the need arose.

Unfortunately, to an increasing extent, cops are becoming adversarial masters over the citizenry rather than being their allies and servants. There are very few people in this country who are 100.000% law-abiding. There are so many laws that nearly everyone is either guilty of, or has friends who are guilty of, things that they don't think should be crimes. In such an environment, police are no longer allies to be assisted, but rather enemies to be avoided.

Any law which is strongly opposed by even a third of the citizenry is a bad law. Efforts to enforce such a law will turn that third of the citizenry against the government. Unfortunately, many laws today get passed with complete contempt for any opposition. It should be little surprise, then, that the citizenry return that contempt.