I'd be more comfortable behind the wheel with a few beers then a few smokes.

I have quite a few friends who have drove both, i can tell you drunk drivers seem to have an air of confidence about them (created by the drink) and then whenever i have watched my friends drive stoned they are almost always slower because they have alot less confidence, also because thier stoned there is an extra worry about the cops, so they try to drive normal.

but I really, truly don't understand why we spend money and man-hours keeping marijuana illegal. And why do we spend money locking citizens up for smoking the stuff? Can anyone formulate a rationale for this policy?

Im just assuming its somewhat similar in America but over here we have a majority of people (im mainly thinking the middle classes) who assume its a terrible thing just because of the name drugs, i can't tell you how many people i have had to explain that tobacco and alcohol are also drugs (and far worse ones at that) anyway back to the name, drugs, the other thing that really doesn't help over here is articles in the daily mail like, man kills man after 6 hour drug binge.... the man had been smoking marijuana several hours previously... the daily mail seems to make an effort to find anything crazy done by anyone on marijuana and then link to two repeatedly until it becomes like a mantra, if we could just convince rupert murdoch to have a go at weed and he decided he didn't mind it then we would only have 50 odd years of propaganda to reverse..... plan!

I think the other part of the problem outside of the daily mail and papers like it is all the propagnada the govermnet put out itself, alot of the dodgy old anti-marijuana productions the goverment made are in the minds of older people and have spread to younger people through word of mouth, the goverment havng been saying its bad and wrong for so long they have alot of people convinced

Lastly the problem is politicians, outside of holland i think it would be political suicide or at least here in the UK it would be, if the labour party did it definetly, if the conservatives did it probably, the storm over here created by a mix of the moralising middle classes and the rupert murdoch papers, needless to say a majority in the country would be left in no doubt that legalising marijuana would cause the downfall of society