[Edit35]

You ask if I am anti-WOD. My answer is both yes and no.

First off, pot should be decriminalized for any amount under a half-pound or so. Instead of ruining a persons life with jail or expulsion from school, etc, a person caught with such small amounts should simply get a big fine or forced to do peace corp community service, or something like that. But jail?? Nah. That just turns the poor kid into a hardened criminal.

However, I think smugglers or maunfacturers of large amounts such non-regulated street drugs as methamphetamine, esctasy, cocaine, crack, heroin, and LSD, should continue to face tough penalties, even possible jail time.

That said, people caught with smaller amounts of "hard" drugs(as long as they didn't threaten with a gun, or strong arm their customers) should not face long sentences in a hardened prison, but incarceration at a half-way house or rehab.

Small drug users or dealers should always be kept separate from violent offenders, as long as they remain non violent.

If that means having a separate rehab or facility just for druggies, then so be it. If society continues to incarcerate drug users along with violent criminals, then we will continue to make the problems worse.

Just to wrap it up, how many people do you know who use their own (legal) drug of choice, be it alcohol or valium, yet they still throw dirt on the other guy who happens to be using a substance they consider to be unacceptable (such as hydrocodone in Rush's case).

Of course, there are problems in every so-called solution, even mine. (For example, what if someone sells drugs to a person, who later OD's and dies??)

Drug usage is not an easy problem to solve.

[gcruse]

Just to wrap it up, how many people do you know who use their own (legal) drug of choice, be it alcohol or valium, yet they still throw dirt on the other guy who happens to be using a substance they consider to be unacceptable (such as hydrocodone in Rush's case).

Just about everybody I know fits in that category.
I wonder if the law is really the only thing keeping us from becoming a nation of drug addicts, or if most of us have the sense to know heroin and coke can kill us one way or the other, and have no interest in it. 

What may be going on is the Authoritarian Mantra writ large.  That is, I'm okay, but the other guy can't be trusted to make up his own mind without someone telling him what to do, so let's get government to tell us all what to do.

I think the liberal/conservative spectrum should be dumped in favor of a line that runs from liberty to authoritarianism.  That way, oppression will be seen to be what it is, no matter if it comes from the left or the right.