I have written many times about this topic.  The rationale for criminal penalties for marijuana do not pass several tests.  First, this drug is much less harmful than alcohol.  Ask any physician how often they see marijuana related disease compared with alcohol related disease.  Pot heads rarely get in fights or cause major car wrecks.  We occasionally see some side effects from marijuana use, but these admissions are swamped by other drugs.  These laws are costing society dearly in financial terms and in general respect for the law.

Pat Robertson understands – Pat Robertson’s Christmas Present to Marijuana Legalizers – and he states the issue clearly:

There’s something else we’ve gotta recognize. We’re locking up people that take a couple of puffs of marijuana, and the next thing you know they’ve got ten years, but mandatory sentences, and these judges just say, they throw up their hands and say there’s nothing we can do, it’s mandatory sentences.

We’ve gotta take a look at what we’re considering crimes, and that’s one of them. I mean, I’m not exactly for the use of drugs, don’t get me wrong, but I just believe that criminalizing marijuana, criminalizing the possession of a few ounces of pot and that kind of thing, it’s costing us a fortune and it’s ruining young people. Young people going to prisons–they go in as youths and they come out as hardened criminals, it’s not a good thing.

Amen!