For more than three decades, America’s marijuana policies have been based upon rhetoric. Perhaps it’s time to begin listening to what the experts have to say.
Speaking privately with Richard Nixon in 1971, the late Art Linkletter offered this view on the use of marijuana versus alcohol. “When people smoke marijuana, they smoke it to get high. In every case, when most people drink, they drink to be sociable.”
“That’s right, that’s right,” Nixon agreed. “A person does not drink to get drunk A person drinks to have fun.”
The following year Linkletter announced that he had reversed his position on pot, concluding instead that the drug’s social harms were not significant enough to warrant its criminal prohibition. Nixon however stayed the course — launching the so-called “war” on drugs, a social policy that now results in the arrest of more than 800,000 Americans each year for violating marijuana laws.