Lest any of you who are opposed (for your own good reasons) to legalizing marijuana might have misunderstood me...

I do NOT encourage ANYONE to smoke or use marijuana (or tobacco). I have never encouraged anyone to smoke pot or use it. But I am opposed to making its use illegal, because there is no practical justification for doing so, and it's counterproductive to enforce such laws.

I likewise do not encourage people to overeat, be lazy, be ignorant, or be self-destructive in any manner...but I would regard passing laws to govern their activities in regard to those problems to be asinine and unenforcable...as are the marijuana laws.

When younger, I lived among a peer group where virtually everyone (except me) smoked marijuana either casually or habitually. For the minority it was sort of casual, I'd say. For a few it was really habitual. Those few DID do themselves some harm (but probably a good deal less than with cigarettes and alcohol). The laws against the plant only further complicated the matter and helped absolutely no one, nor did those laws succeed in protecting anyone against their own basic weaknesses and tendencies. They were a hypocritical and needless complication in a society where 99.9% of the population is already addicted to various bad and perfectly legal habits.

Such anti-marijuana laws do not protect people, and they waste the valuable time of the police who might better be actually protecting people from real crime. Drug use is not a crime. Aggressive bad behaviour is a crime.

I repeat, I do not encourage anyone to smoke marijuana, but I think they have the right to make their own decision about it and not live in fear for having made that decision. It's their business, not the government's, whether they smoke marijuana, drink wine, smoke a cigarette or eat junk food. It's the government's business when they rob, do violence, drive drunk, smoke in someone else's air, commit fraud, etc.

It's nobody's business telling another adult whether or not they can grow or smoke a naturally occuring plant in the privacy of their own life.

You can't force people to be perfect, just because you want it that way. If you think you have a right to, well, that's just being a control freak...and that is your problem, not the other guy's.

One more time. If asked, I would advise anyone NOT to smoke marijuana...or cigarettes either. I don't smoke them. But I would not arrest him for doing so. It's his business to regulate his own life, not mine.

I believe in personal freedom, not domination. No set of laws you can dream up will EVER succeed in protecting people from their own self-indulgent tendencies. It's like trying to grab the wind and hold it down with your hands...utterly pointless. The wind blows where it will and there is nothing you can do about it. Accept it. You cannot force other people to be like you. They won't tolerate it.

Attend to your own house, brother. If you're wise, you won't depend on marijuana, alcohol or tobacco to get you through your day...or any other mind-altering drug either. Leave your brother alone to tend to his house as best he knows how. You wouldn't like it if he told you "You've got to do it MY way." Leave people alone. Control yourself, and stop trying to control others!