Being a great fan of personal liberty to the extent the individual does not harm another, I can only wholeheartedly support the premises and observations laid out in the following article. The "war" on drugs not only does not reduce crime, number of prisoners, nor as far as we can see since Vietnam nor does it reduce drug use, but as far as I can tell, the war on drugs only fuels crime, creating the black markets, creating criminals, causing great angst and physical health problems for those who are addicted, and drastically increasing the prison population of "criminals" for victimless "crimes". Humans will be human. There will always be those humans who wish to experiment, or to make life long use their choice or addicted non-choice as the case may be, whether their drug(s) of choice be alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, cocaine, heroine, ice, ecstasy or anything else. Humans will be human and so logically there is NO FIRETRUCKING POINT in making crimes out of "normal" human behaviour and choices, where those choices and behaviours harm no one other than (at most) the individual themselves. Prohibition never worked. Alcohol got legalized again, marijuana is on a slowish road to re-legalization and many of us are aware of DuPont's cotton empire and political connections causing the prohibition of marijuana. Indeed, prohibition has only -ever- made the reality on the ground, for the users/ addicted to that which is prohibited, much worse, except of course for those police, government, military and other outlaw gangs who profit from the prohibition - read Victoria Police Corruption (Hoser) for various Australian examples. We can only hope that the tending to be somewhat more intellectual "public conversation" that occurs in Russia will turn to such rational observations, be supported with bold honest public discussion, and that they can move their collective political selves in the only rational "harm minimization" direction - legalizing all drugs, at the very least on prescription for those who are addicted. All together now let us pray, pray for the poppies. ... http://russia-insider.com/en/politics/mirroring-america-why-russias-war-drug... Mirroring America: Why Russia's War on Drugs Will Fail Russia seems determined to pursue a drug policy which over the last 40 years has failed resoundingly in the United States and world wide