Monday, March 30, 2009

Former Judge On Legalizing Pot

LA Times
All right, tell me this doesn't sound a little strange:

I'm sitting in Costa Mesa with a silver-haired gent who once ran for Congress as a Republican and used to lock up drug dealers as a federal prosecutor, a man who served as an Orange County judge for 25 years. And what are we talking about? He's begging me to tell you we need to legalize drugs in America.

 "Please quote me," says Jim Gray, insisting the war on drugs is hopeless. "What we are doing has failed."

As far as I can tell, Gray is not off his rocker. He's not promoting drug use, he says for clarification. Anything but. If he had his way, half the revenue we would generate from taxing and regulating drugs would be plowed back into drug prevention education, and there'd be rehab on demand.

So here he is in coat and tie -- with a U.S. flag lapel pin -- eating his oatmeal and making perfect sense, even when talking about the way President Obama flippantly dismissed a question about legalizing marijuana last week during a White House news conference.

2 comments:

  1. Anonymous9:05 AM

    This former judge is exactly right and needs to be taken seriously. I personally applaud his honesty and wisdom. Now if the rest of the socalled criminal justice system would get there heads out of the sand, perhaps something could be done about the problem. It could cut our prison population in half and save the taxpayers of this country billions of dollars without jeopardizing public safety.djw

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