I just read an opinion piece by Orson Scott Card, a science-fiction writer for whom I have tremendous respect. He wrote Ender's Game, and if you only read only sci-fi novel in your life, make it this one. At any rate, the piece was on drug legalization and how we shouldn't do it. I agree and disagree. The problem is that he puts all illegal drugs into one category, and that's not fair. Cocaine, heroin, even LSD, I hsve no problem with the illegality of such substances. Marijuana, on the other hand, has proven medical benefits, and even if it didn't, it's certainly has less of an effect on a person's behavior than ritalin, or percosett, or any number of other "legal" drugs. That's the problem with people who feel all drugs should be illegal. They really mean all illegal drugs should be illegal. I'd much rather have someone driving around town on pot than on most prescription drugs. And I'd rather see someone take marijuana to relieve glaucoma or fight nausea brought on by chemotherapy, then see any kid put on ritalin or adderol, drugs whose long-term effects are less known than pot. I was in a college freaternity in the last ten years, and that makes me much more of an expert on the effects of drugs on behavior than Orson Scott Card, who admits to only once knowingly being in the same building as illegal drugs, and that was just pot. Pot is not illegal because of problems it causes to people's health and behavior, but because of the problems the government faced taxing it in the early 20th century, and the fact that, at the time it became illegal, it was associated with jazz musicians, an undesirable group among the law-making elite of the time.