-You have talked in the past of smoking pot when you returned from Vietnam. What do you think of the way the pot laws are prosecuted today?
-We have never had a legitimate War on Drugs in the United States, ever, and we won't until we have treatment on demand for addiction and until you have full drug education in our schools. The mandatory-minimum-sentencing structure of our country is funneling people into jail who have no business being there.
-And every year, the number of people arrested for marijuana offenses goes up.
-I've met plenty of people in my lifetime who've used marijuana and who I would not qualify as serious addicts -- who use about the same amount as some people drink beer or wine or have a cocktail. I don't get too excited by any of that.
-Would you favor decriminalization?
-No, not quite. What we did in the prosecutor's office was have a sort of unspoken approach to marijuana that was almost effectively decriminalization. We just didn't bother with small-time use. It doesn't rise to the level of nuisance, even. And what we were after was people dealing with heroin and destroying lives, and people who were killing people. That's where you need to focus.
http://www.rollingstone.com/features/nationalaffairs/featuregen.asp?pi... In Holland, smoking pot is still illegal, but there is an official blind eye turned to it. This would seem a perfect solution for defusing conservatives that would freak out (with middle America) over immediate de-criminalization.
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Here is something I found from a quick Google search:
MacCoun warns against using the experience of the drug-decriminalization states to make arguments for outright marijuana legalization or for decriminalizing harder drugs.
His research shows that marijuana use didn't increase much in the 1970s in the Netherlands when the Dutch police stopped enforcing laws against marijuana possession. But the government began allowing pot to be sold openly at coffee shops in the 1980s, and marijuana use almost tripled among 18- t0 20-year-olds by 1996, his studies found.
The Dutch experience suggests that not throwing drug users in jail is different - and has much less impact - than actually allowing commercial access to marijuana, MacCoun said.
"The Dutch have made a choice," MacCoun said in his congressional testimony. "Less black market activity at the retail level and less police intrusiveness in ordinary life in exchange for higher levels of marijuana use."
Advocates of marijuana legalization also cite studies from Holland showing that overall, marijuana use in Holland remains below that in the United States and that adolescent marijuana use is nearly twice as high in America compared to the Netherlands - with Dutch per-capita spending on drug-related law enforcement well below that in the United States.
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v99/n975/a09.html Training was tough, and exhilarating. I also got some plum training assignments-- I first went to California as a freshly minted naval officer and was assigned to remarkably difficult duty -- Treasure Island, San Francisco. I got to know San Francisco dangerously well for a 23 year old as I learned how to navigate complex challenges -- the Filmore West, the Grateful Dead, and the Rolling Stones.
After coming back from my first tour of duty in Vietnam, I was then assigned gunboat command and went to Coronado, San Diego to train. Again it was tough -- living in an apartment on Pacific Beach -- surfing everyday until we dropped -- returning from survival training in the mountains to the greatest beer I ever tasted.
We made the most of that time, feeling very young and invincible even as we trained for the missions of our lives.
http://www.usmilitarysupport.org/veterans_history/john_kerry.html