Georgian Silver - You asked: "Is there anyone on this thread who does not smoke pot that feels it should be legalised??????."

Yes! Me. Where have you been? I have stated over and over again in this thread that I do not smoke pot, I have always thought it was a stupid thing to do (even when virtually my entire young peer group and all my friends were doing it in the '70's), I do not recommend that anyone do it, and I AM in favour of a certain form of legalization of it, as follows:

1. Make it legal to privately possess small amounts, to use those small amounts in the privacy of your own home, and to grow marijuana plants in small amounts in your own home for the purpose of personal use if you want to. (This is what millions of people already do and will continue doing no matter what laws you pass, and most of them do not suffer any major damage from so doing. More importantly, it's THEIR business, not the government's, if they do.)

2. Make it illegal to sell pot publicly or to mass market in any way. Make it illegal to deal. Make it illegal to put in a fancy package under any brand name. Make it illegal to advertise on any media.

3. Make it illegal to smoke or use in a public place, such as: restaurant, office, street, etc.

4. Establish a government regulated supply of clean, unadulterated pot for specific medicinal purpose (such as treating glaucoma), dispensed on a doctor's prescription).

What I am suggesting would address several important issues.

It would prevent mass marketing of the substance, which is the thing that creates large numbers of addicts. (examples: cigarettes, alcohol, tobacco, and all illegal drugs...legal drugs mass market openly, illegal ones mass market clandestinely).

It would remove the incentive to mass market (big profits to the seller!).

It would assist people who have medical needs that can be helped through the use of pot.

It would protect the ordinary public from undue harassment by cops who are wasting their time trying to protect people from themselves! The government has no business trying to protect me or you from ourselves. That is our job, not the government's.

Dear GeorgianSilver, I am not a drug user. I do not get high on any drug, I do not smoke, I drink so little and so seldom that if most people were like me the breweries and distilleries would all go bankrupt very quickly, I don't drink coffee, I take no prescription drugs at all, and I have been like that all my life. I also believe deeply in God, as I know you do, and I see a spiritual purpose being played out in every human situation.

I detest draconian governments which intrude in a dictatorial fashion into people's private lives, and I disapprove of self-righteous people who, like the scribes and pharisess in the New Testament, walk around in their cloak of dour conventionality trying to scare people and force everyone else to live according to their overweening will and misplaced sense of moral superiority.

Marijuana in itself is no threat to society and never was. The mass marketing of marijuana is a threat to society. That mass marketing will continue as long as there is BIG MONEY to be made by so doing...and there will be as long as the drug is illegal...or legal to market. I have suggested exactly how to cut this thing off at the marketing source, and at the same time leave ordinary little people alone in their ordinary little lives to make their own decisions about how to live in private.

You see, if he who really wants pot in a big way can grow his own...without fear of arrest...then you have totally eliminated the criminal AND the legal mass marketer! And you have thereby eliminated 98% of the pot problem...because the guy who really wants pot in a big way will always seek it out anyway. Far better if he can grow his own, rather than go to a criminal for it.

The politicians will not do this, though, because they do not serve the public, they serve the highest bidder!

And right now that is the crime syndicates, behind the scenes...but if pot were legalized for the purposes of marketing, it would be the cigarette companies (legal drug dealers of the worst sort) who would push it...and then you'd REALLY have a pot-smoking epidemic on your hands, brother! It would be advertised conspicuously and consumed conspicuously by all the little consumer sheep who watch TV every day.

I don't do that either, not anymore. I gave up on TV by around 1985, and I haven't looked back. The benefits have been considerable. (TV is another common addiction that wastes people's lives, in my opinion.) I read books and play music instead.

I don't fit your definition of a legalization of pot supporter. Not in the least.

You have to pay attention to the details in a matter like this...not just say, "Oh, that stuff is bad for people! Let's make it illegal and that will solve the problem." It has NOT solved the problem, it has enlarged the problem.