I agree.
I desire legality for two reasons though.
#1. I would like to grow a couple of plants for myself. I believe the penalties for growing are still very high.
#2. I work at a place that drug tests so I can't currently partake. Legalization might change things in that department.
Look man, I get it. I know a guy who entirely got off prescription fentanyl because he was able to quasi-legally use marijuana in Arizona. It doesn't take a genius to know which of those drugs is more debilitating to your daily life.
Recreational use is one thing. That's regulation of people wanting to have fun. That's arguably a moral evil but, if done sensibly, you can at least make an argument that people need to be protected from themselves. Just like how we don't let people roll the dice on old food products that are probably fine most of the time. You need hard line rules to prevent people from making themselves ill. Of course, the US DEA scheduling system doesn't do that sensibly. To return to our prior example, Marijuana is Schedule I (supposedly reserved for drugs with high abuse potential and no recognized medical use) while Fentanyl is Schedule III and available for prescription use because of supposed low risk of abuse. Tobacco, which probably actually fits the definition of Schedule I given that it creates physical dependency, is legal everywhere.
Don't even get me started on the multiple Schedule I substances classifiable as psychedelics. The number of hours wasted on therapy because MDMA is schedule I is probably uncountable. Based upon experiences with those I know, it is honestly a
moral evil that we keep that stuff away from people. Years of bad **** gets wiped away in just a few sessions. That we then spend money propagandizing the substance to try and justify its prohibition is even worse. Lots of people's lives would be enriched if clean and legal sources were easily acquirable.
That's much more important to me than something like weed at the end of the day. It's not about legalizing any one drug, what's needed is to completely scrap and overhaul the Scheduling system. Until then, all the drugs, Schedule I or otherwise, will remain soft legal as long as you have sufficient resources to do it in non-public ways. That's a real poverty tax that hits the poor and minorities disproportionately.
It's this sort of stuff that makes me wish for IQ tests in order to vote. People are just so stupid. How can you be black and possibly believe, based on their track records, that Hilary is more committed to black issues than Bernie? It just boggles the mind.
And it's not restricted to black people, either. How can you be a hardcore evangelical and somehow believe that Trump cares about evangelicals more than Cruz or Carson?
I think Trump has managed to expose real divides in the party. The reality is that those evangelicals have been convinced to vote for people who didn't have their best interests at heart because they got dog whistled on some social issues. Trump doesn't care about them either, but he's at least saying all the populist things that actually affect those people's lives (in their perception) more than hypothetical issues about gay marriage or abortion.
Real Evangelicals don't have a natural party home. They are socially with the GOP but the vast majority of them would benefit from Democratic policy. Trump hits the sweet spot. He voices anger and appears to be the thing that no one else provides them.
I will say this: if Bernie manages to win Iowa AND New Hampshire then it's a real race. I suspect African Americans will come around to him when they get to know him a little better. But he's going to have to make that happen before the largely southern primary happens to prevent Hillary from getting a huge delegate lead. A few high reach people in the African American community are starting to really push him (e.g. Cornel West, Killer Mike), and that will go a long way.