[420 Girl]

Given today’s main page topic, and the fact that many readers may be under the impression that only crazed libertarians are in favor of drug legalization, it seems worth linking to this 1996 National Review symposium on the War on Drugs. From the editors’ introduction:

Things being as they are, and people as they are, there is no way to prevent somebody, somewhere, from concluding that “NATIONAL REVIEW favors drugs.” We don’t; we deplore their use; we urge the stiffest feasible sentences against anyone convicted of selling a drug to a minor. But that said, it is our judgment that the war on drugs has failed, that it is diverting intelligent energy away from how to deal with the problem of addiction, that it is wasting our resources, and that it is encouraging civil, judicial, and penal procedures associated with police states. We all agree on movement toward legalization, even though we may differ on just how far.

The entire symposium is well worth reading, and includes William F. Buckley’s 1995 testimony before the New York Bar Association. Here’s his conclusion:

… it is outrageous to live in a society whose laws tolerate sending young people to life in prison because they grew, or distributed, a dozen ounces of marijuana. I would hope that the good offices of your vital profession would mobilize at least to protest such excesses of wartime zeal, the legal equivalent of a My Lai massacre. And perhaps proceed to recommend the legalization of the sale of most drugs, except to minors.

Meanwhile, here is Buckley on the same subject in 2004, and here he is defending his position on legalization in a 1996 television interview (part 2 here, part 3 here):

Given today’s main page topic, and the fact that many readers may be under the impression that only crazed libertarians are in favor of drug legalization, it seems worth linking to this 1996 National Review symposium on the War on Drugs. From the editors’ introduction:

Things being as they are, and people as they are, there is no way to prevent somebody, somewhere, from concluding that “NATIONAL REVIEW favors drugs.” We don’t; we deplore their use; we urge the stiffest feasible sentences against anyone convicted of selling a drug to a minor. But that said, it is our judgment that the war on drugs has failed, that it is diverting intelligent energy away from how to deal with the problem of addiction, that it is wasting our resources, and that it is encouraging civil, judicial, and penal procedures associated with police states. We all agree on movement toward legalization, even though we may differ on just how far.

The entire symposium is well worth reading, and includes William F. Buckley’s 1995 testimony before the New York Bar Association. Here’s his conclusion:

… it is outrageous to live in a society whose laws tolerate sending young people to life in prison because they grew, or distributed, a dozen ounces of marijuana. I would hope that the good offices of your vital profession would mobilize at least to protest such excesses of wartime zeal, the legal equivalent of a My Lai massacre. And perhaps proceed to recommend the legalization of the sale of most drugs, except to minors.

http://www.420magazine.com/forums/in...rugs-lost.html