I'm not saying all drugs should be legal, but there are a lot of drugs that are currently illegal for no good reason.
The criteria should be:
1) How physically dangerous is the drug (toxicity, side effects, etc.)
2) How addictive is the drug
3) What effect does it have on a society that people take that drug (and this can't just be broad generalizations that people so often rely on, it has to be based on something rational and something provable)
Using any other criteria that aren't based on some kind of evidence or research is too unstable of a foundation for a criminal justice system to justify punishing people for using those drugs. Its a very regressive kind of attitude to do otherwise.
We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers…Also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls. The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. –Raoul Duke
It is hard to shed anything but crocodile tears over White House speechwriter Patrick Buchanan's tragic analysis of the Nixon debacle. "It's like Sisyphus," he said. "We rolled the rock all the way up the mountain...and it rolled right back down on us...." Neither Sisyphus nor the commander of the Light Brigade nor Pat Buchanan had the time or any real inclination to question what they were doing...a martyr, to the bitter end, to a "flawed" cause and a narrow, atavistic concept of conservative politics that has done more damage to itself and the country in less than six years than its liberal enemies could have done in two or three decades. -Hunter S. Thompson
