Posted On: January 29, 2008, 10:14 am CST

Posted By: lastbat

My take has been for years that all drugs (yes, I mean all) should be legalized. It would free up billions from the "war on drugs" that will never end; it will add billions to the tax base; and free up millions at the least from the judicial system because they won't be prosecuting users and dealers anymore. Face it, the things that are truly bad about drugs (stealing, killing, abuse) are already illegal. People have been altering themselves for years, will always alter themselves, and keeping certain classes of drugs illegal is just prudish.

As for work and driving . . . it's already illegal to drive while intoxicated, so legalizing drugs wouldn't change anything. And I should be able to control who I hire. I already have the right to fire people for being under the effects of perfectly legal drugs - alcohol and nicotine (nicotine only under certain circumstances, but I believe that should change too)- so I retain the right to fire people for using other legal drugs.

For medical marijuana - treat it like a prescription. If they can't safely do the job, they go on FMLA. Once that's up, they either come back to work or they're out of a job. And you can always, and should always, enforce company policy while people are medicated. That means if they screw up the job, they get disciplined; it doesn't matter if they only messed up because they were using drugs.

Mind you, all this comes from someone who has never taken an illegal drug in my life, can count on one hand the number of times I've consumed alcohol, has never smoked and avoids all pain killers like the plague. I'm not prudish, just too cheap to indulge.