I appreciate the compliment. To be perfectly honest, it couldn't possibly be easier for kids to access drugs. Kids reported in a recent survey that it is easier to acquire illegal drugs (almost certainly mar1juana) than it is to get alcohol. In addition, we have shown the ability to positively affect access to regulated drugs. In the early 90's, the "We Card" programs started and since then, accessibility to minors has dropped by 50% for alcohol and 25% for tobacco. In a regulated market, it is easier to police who is able to buy because legitimate businesses are responsible for distribution. We CAN reduce the access our kids have to drugs, particularly if we treat them like alcohol, but with more stringent controls. Part of the education process would be alerting the potential users as to the consequences of these actions. I would recommend in such a system that providing drugs (including alcohol) to minors be punishable by probation for a first offense, a year IN jail for a second, five years for a third, ten years for a fourth. Let's police what ALL of us are concerned about: the access that our young people have to drugs. Let's NOT police responsible adults who do nothing to harm anyone and simply want to choose their own intoxicant. Sure, but what impact will it have when the message MUST be one borne of prohibition? The government will not allow HONEST education about drugs because such education would include certain facts (MJ has never killed anyone, it is less toxic than alcohol, addiction rates are far lower than alcohol, etc) that are inconvenient when you are trying to claim that mar1juana should remain illegal. The message must be honest in order for kids to accept it. Kids know when we are lying and as long as we lie to them about drugs, they will rebel and use them in extraordinarily high numbers like they are today (half of all kids use drugs before they leave high school and have since the early 70s). That is a long list (societal benefits of regulating MJ), but here is an overview: 1. 700,000 (2003 number) otherwise law abiding people would not be arrested and prosecuted, costing untold millions in legal fees, court costs, lost work time, jail space and costs, lost jobs, and other hardships. 2. Industrial hemp (not mar1juana that you smoke, the kind used for paper, rope, oil, textiles, etc.) would immediately become the number one cash crop in four different states, dramatically spurring the economy and reducing the need for $20 billion per year in farm subsidies. 3. Hemp seed oil is a totally renewable resource that can be easily refined to run an existing diesel engine, giving us a new source of energy to help reduce our dependance on Middle East oil. 4. Tax revenues, nuff said. 5. We could begin charging people with DUI and test them for pot with the breathalyzer that already exists and is used in Holland. 6. We could engineer the system to make it easy to track where a shipment of the drug came from to help law enforcement find and arrest people who provide drugs to kids. I would add more, but the Rox game is about to start and I want to handle your last statement. In the short term, no. I would want to measure the effects of regulating one drug at a time. I WOULD like to see prescription heroin for already existing junkies like they have in Switzerland because that program has dramatically reduced the participants' criminality and has significantly improved their recovery rates. We need to take it one step at a time, but we NEED to start TAKING those steps.
