I suppose I was more interested to get his thoughts on the issue than anything else.

I am strongly in favor of legalizing marijuana, but probably not for the reasons you might think.

I have never, ever, not even once in my whole life, used an illegal pharmaceutical, nor have I ever been interested in doing so. Unmodified reality is interesting enough on its own -- I don't need to enhance (or, I guess depending on the drug, diminish) it.

But -- I also have no interest in preventing someone else from doing so.

Oh, if it were a relative or acquaintance and I thought he was ruining his life, I might try and talk him out of it. But I would never countenance passing a law to protect him from himself, "...for his own good." I sincerely hope that if I should ever show signs of that kind of monstrous arrogance, someone will whop me a good one alongside the head, "...for my own good!"

So if I don't care one way or another about whether someone wants to indulge in illegal drug usage, why am I adamantly in favor of legalization of marijuana?

Well, let's re-phrase that a bit. I am in favor of decriminalization of marijuana, that is, let's get rid of the ridiculous laws that have ruined far more lives (orders of magnitude more lives!) than the use of the drug itself has ever done. Imagine how much better use we could make of the billions of dollars spent every year in fruitless attempts to enforce an unenforceable law whose violators harm nobody.

I am mindful of the time some years back that a fellow bought a used pickup truck here in Alaska, to drive to his new job in the lower 48. Apparently the Customs folks at the Canadian border didn't like his looks or something... they pretty much dismantled the truck, and lo and behold, mixed in amongst the ashes in the ashtray were two miniscule seeds (apparently left there by the previous owner) that Customs decreed to be marijuana seeds. Being fair-minded, they did not throw the man in jail. Instead, they confiscated his truck (to be later sold at public auction, the funds going to the Canadian government) and left the man to his own devices to walk 300 miles back home again. Oh, boy, it's a damn good thing that marijuana is illegal, otherwise criminals like that would be out walking our streets. Oh, wait...

Every time I hear somebody say that he thinks marijuana should be illegal, I think of the statement by HL Mencken, who said: "A puritan is someone who wakes up in a cold sweat at two o'clock in the morning, desperately afraid that somehow, somewhere, someone is having a good time."

So, yes, I am in favor of legalizing marijuana, and now perhaps you have some glimmerings of the reasons why.

tanstaafl.