Ron Paul makes sense about legalizing marijuana

Ron Paul: Legalize Marijuana and Reduce Crime
Rep. Ron Paul declares that the federal war on drugs is a failure and legalizing marijuana would reduce the prison population and in effect the crime rate.“I think we should look at the federal drug war, and I would say the federal drug war has failed so we should reject it,” the Texas Republican, who ran for president last year, told CNN.“When I talk about changing the law, I want to go back to a constitutional approach to a problem like this, and that is through the states.“Up until 1937 there wasn’t even a law against marijuana, and at that time they just passed a law to tax it. So we’ve had an experience in this country where we didn’t have all these laws, but it was regulated by the states.
"Alcohol is legalized by the federal government but it’s regulated by state laws.”****A compelling analogy.****
Paul said he is particularly disturbed by the federal government’s efforts to override state laws allowing some people to legally obtain medicinal marijuana, as has happened in California.They’ll pass a law that says that sick people can use it. So people who are dying with AIDS or cancer are getting benefit from marijuana. Then the federal government comes in and says we don’t care about the state law, and they just override it and put people into prison for this.“We have over 500,000 people that never committed a violent crime in prison for drug use, and there are mandatory jail sentences under these conditions.
"This makes no sense. It’s so expensive, and it hasn’t achieved anything.”
Paul included other drugs in the discussion when he said: “We’re creating a monstrous legal problem costing hundreds of billions of dollars and putting people in prison who should be treated as sick people. They shouldn’t be treated as criminals.
"The problems we have is because the price for these drugs is about a thousand times greater than it would be” if they were legal and regulated.“We’ve created most of the problems for ourselves,” he added, “and these drug wars are a consequence of our policies.”