Sawzaw...the question of legality vs illegality is an interesting and complex one without one simple answer.

On the one hand, it's simply unwise to do anything illegal...not because it's necessarily immoral or morally wrong....but merely because it puts you in danger of the forces of the law.

Let me explain that. In most societies there are some laws that are stupid, archaic, unjust, and just downright wrong. Why? Well, because human beings are imperfect, and imperfect beings sometimes enact stupid, unjust, archaic laws that don't actually make any sense, but are the result of cultural prejudices or muddled thinking. That, in my opnion, is the case with the marijuana laws...just as it was once the case with the laws banning alcoholic beverages during Prohibition. In both cases you had a stupid, unjust, oppressive, and totally impractical set of laws enacted by people with good intentions, but people having no idea how foolish they were being when they passed those laws...laws which could only make the situation far worse and provide a windfall for organized crime.

However....and this is a BIG however....I personally do my utmost not to break even a stupid, unjust, and oppressive law for one simple reason: NOT because I respect that law! No sir. I obey that law because I don't wish to put myself at risk of the forces of the law who are people with little imagination and little mercy. Why should I risk my own freedom by violating their stupid, unjust law???? It's far easier and wiser for me to obey it even THOUGH I know it's a stupid and unjust law. So I obey it.

People are foolish to imagine that civil law is the ultimate moral authority in life. It isn't. It wasn't made by God, it was made by men, and men make mistakes. I do not worship the temporal decisions of men nor take them as gospel, but I do realize that I would put myself at unnecessary risk by breaking a stupid law, therefore I obey it even though it is asinine...as in the case of the illegality of marijuana....and also because I'm not interested in getting high anyway.

But I don't imagine for a moment that the forces of the law hold any high moral ground in enforcing such an asinine law. They don't, and the law is wrong.

Bobert obviously feels that he is willing to risk the illegality of smoking marijuana because he likes the stuff. Fine with me, but he is, of course, risking an entanglement with the law. That doesn't make him immoral, it just means he's facing a legal risk that I am not facing. He's not boasting about smoking grass, he just happens to like it. Fine with me. It's not a moral issue at all, it's a legal issue, and I don't care one way or the other, but I do hope he doesn't get in any trouble for it, because he's not a criminal.

The law is a bunch of established cultural ideas and habits that have been written down, and cultures are often very foolish about a number of things they do. To make marijuana illegal is, in my opinion, utterly foolish, and the law that does so is a useless one that helps nobody, but only robs people of free choice in a matter where they should have free choice. It is a bad, undemocratic law, a violation of personal freedom. Period. There are some bad laws in all societies, and it behooves all men of conscience to speak out against them vigorously and work for their repeal. Your American revolutionaries knew that, and that's why they finally revolted against the English crown. Mere technical legality under any regime is not necessarily truth OR justice! Remember that.