This is My Area of Expertise
George Washington was the largest landowner in the 13 colonies from 1765 to 1787, holding the largest estate in all of America. One of his principal cash crops were thousands of acres of cannabis sativa. Yes, you heard me right, the Founding Father was America's original 'drug' lord of incredible-never-since-then quanties of the very same plant that was unconstitutionally banned in 1937 through illegal federal taxation (Harrison Act, Marijuana Stamp Tax). Washington was a pipe smoker and wrote extensively in his diaries about his many varieties of hemp, cannabis, and his diaries show incredible detail and observations about the nature and utility of the cannabis plant.
Thomas Jefferson also was an advocate and this can be found in his own writings.
When speaking about drugs, do not use the term 'legalizing drugs', instead try 'Repeal Prohibition'. Older people understand the alcohol prohibition period and the machine-gun toting gangs, corrupt paid-off cops, the violence on the streets. As soon as alcohol prohibition was ended in 1933 (with the only repeal of a constitutional amendment ever! - the 21st Amendment in 1933 repealed the 18th Amendment of 1919- The Volstead Act), the last gangster of the Prohibition era was captured or killed by 1936. Gang violence was dramatically reduced and every person from that era knew it was because alcohol prohibition was reversed.
However, Drug Prohibition was enacted (inexplicably without any constitutional amendments as was required for alcohol prohibition) in 1937 and all the ex-G men in the ATF of its day were hired on by the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, and thus began marijuana prohibition.
The difference between alcohol and marijuana, is that in the 1930's tens of millions of Americans drank alcohol but less than 150,000 people in America (almost all blacks, hispanics and jazz lovers actually) consumed marijuana. The first person convicted of marijuana possession received a 4 year sentence in 1938 and was sentenced to four years in Leavenworth Pen in Kansas.
However, in the 1960's, hundreds of thousands of US soldiers in Vietnam and elsewhere, along with tens of millions of university and college students turned on to pot, and this was Richard Nixon's wet dream, round up the jews, the communists, the anti-war types, anyone and everyone who smoked pot was considered Unamerican by the paranoid Nixon.
Since 1956, 27 million people worldwide have been arrested for pot, 6 million have spent more than one year in jail for pot and 16 million Americans have been arrested for marijuana since 1966. Over 2 million Americans (out of that 6 million total) have spent at least one year in jail for exclusively cannabis related 'crimes'. Its a shocking abuse that has spanned 3 generations of Americans.
The War on Drugs or Prohibition has been the principle cause for the overall erosion of our Constitutional freedoms and rights. The US Supreme Court has validated wire-tapping, entrapment, no-knock warrants, paramilitary action in the US, deprived the sick & dying of cannabis, endorsed espionage on US citizens, condoned deportation of immigrants found with cannabis, infiltration of ordinary groups of Americans, suspended the second Amendment, endorsed warrantless searches, condoned forfeiture of propery, and dozens of unconstitutional invasions of our human decency, our human rights, our property rights.
Prohibition serves no good other than the concentration of violent federal power. Prohibition does not EVER accomplish any of its stated aims, it in fact, creates gangs, murder, police corruption, massive jail populations (55,000 are in state & federal prisons at any given time for ONLY marijuana related offenses!), exploding federal expenditures (its too shockingly high a cost to be unbelieveable, estimated to be $180 billion since 1965), disdain for the sick & dying who need medical cannabis. It has torn millions of children from their parents for various periods of time which science has found is the greatest contributor to the cause of substance abuse --- that is, missing fathers!
Ron Paul's solution is to Repeal Prohibition , end the Income Tax which allows government to spend vast sums on empires, wars, and Prohibition, return control to the States and state referendums, where drugs would be taxed at the state or local level. Ron Paul has in the last 12 months voted to cancel the appropriations budget of the Drug Czar (lost 399 to 5), co-sponsored The States Rights To Medical Marijuana Act (Hinchey-Rohrabacher amendment, lost 259 - 164) and The Steve Williams Truth in Trials Act. Ron Paul is the chief sponsor and only Republican to put forward the 2007 Industrial Hemp Act.