[bassmaner]

Huh? I am not the one shielding myself behind innocent human suffering to promote a wider political agenda of validating the drug culture.

Do you support repealing the 21st Amendment, and returning to the days of moonshine, speakeasys, and Al Capone? After all, ending Prohibition validated the "alcohol culture", didn't it?

The "drug culture", as you describe it, started long before the 1960's: it started in the 1930's, with the first generation of Americans that relied on the welfare state for assorted and sundry government handouts. Marijuana isn't the enemy - socialism is.

[headsonpikes]

"Marijuana isn't the enemy - socialism is."

I agree completely. My earlier point about legalizing opiates was in reference to the absolute amount of harm done. It seems to me there's a moral priority, here. Too often, the cause of ending the WOD appears hi-jacked by spoiled yuppie-puppie stoners.

This does no service to the principled campaign to end the clearly unconstitutional and utopian War on Drugs.

I think the government should simply IGNORE marijuana; the opiates cannot be ignored. THEY should be regulated, like any other potentially lethal commodity.

Marijuana?...feh, what's that got to do with the Helm of State?