Time’s Joe Klein comes out in favor of legalizing pot - noting, as Sen. Jim Webb did in Parade last week and we noted in the vid, that pot busts are filling our prisons; and also noting the possibility of a tax windfall if dope were made legal:

So why not do it? There are serious moral arguments, both secular and religious. There are those who believe — with some good reason — that the accretion of legalized vices is debilitating, that we are a less virtuous society since gambling spilled out from Las Vegas to “riverboats” and state lotteries across the country. There is a medical argument, though not a very convincing one: alcohol is more dangerous in a variety of ways, including the tendency of some drunks to get violent. One could argue that the abuse of McDonald’s has a greater potential health-care cost than the abuse of marijuana. (Although it’s true that with legalization, those two might not be unrelated.) Obviously, marijuana can be abused. But the costs of criminalization have proved to be enormous, perhaps unsustainable. Would legalization be any worse?

I don’t see how it could be.

I don’t buy the “we’re a less virtuous society” business. Less virtuous than when - the Fifties, when gambling was more curtailed but blacks couldn’t sit at lunch counters?

But full-scale legalization is fraught with questions. Is it OK, then, for mom and dad to toke up around the kids? Would we as a society not need to crack down on stoned driving the way we have on drunken driving (not that stoned driving doesn’t happen now, but if you legalize it, don’t you run the risk that it would increase?)

My own inclination is more toward decrimalization, or at least decriminalization first. Glenn Greenwald has authored a piece on Portugal’s successful decminalization of drugs, which could serve as something of a blueprint. Our draconian are ineffective, getting high and being a high achiever are not mutually exclusive, and our jails are filled with non-violent offenders, costing us money and more. It is time for a rational discussion on the issue - which still brings out so much irrationality.