Kofi Annan on Why It's Time to Legalize Drugs

Key findings, page 1

> Around 1 in 12 (8.6%) adults aged 16 to 59 had taken an illicit drug in the last year. This equated to around 2.8 million people. This level of drug use was similar to the 2013/14 survey (8.8%), but significantly lower than a decade ago (11.2% in the 2004/05 survey).

Cannabis, page 3 (The chart on that page is pretty clear.)

> As in previous years, cannabis was the most commonly used drug in the last year, with 6.7 per cent of adults aged 16 to 59 using it in the last year, similar to the 2013/14 survey (6.6%; Figure 1.2). Over the longer-term, between the 1998 and 2003/04 surveys, the last year use of cannabis was stable, at around 10 per cent of adults, before falling to 6.5 per cent in 2009/10. The trend since the 2009/10 survey has been relatively flat, at between six and seven per cent (Table 1.02).

> Among younger adults aged 16 to 24, cannabis was also the most commonly used drug, with 16.3 per cent having used it in the last year. This was not statistically significantly different from the level in 2013/14 (15.1%), but was a significant fall compared with the 1996 survey (25.8%).

> Although the trend in the use of cannabis among 16 to 24 year olds appears to have shown a steady increase compared with the 2012/13 survey, it is too early to conclude that this is an emerging pattern at this stage. The estimates from the 2012/13 survey appear to be out of line with recent results, and a comparison of the latest estimate to previous years may indicate that the trend, which has been falling since the peak in 1998, has gradually stabilised (Table 1.06).

For the US: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/13/teen-marijuana-use-... (sorry about huffpo. CDC need to have a better website.)

> The biennial High School Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System survey from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revealed that the rate of marijuana use among U.S. high school students remained virtually unchanged from 2011 to 2013. It's also about 3 percent less than the peak of teen marijuana use in 1999, when nearly 27 percent of teens said they had recently used marijuana, according to the CDC data.

> In 2013, 23.4 percent of American high-school-aged teens used marijuana one or more times in the 30 days before the survey, the data show. That's nearly even with 23.1 percent in 2011.

As you say; it was drafted to solve the problem of differing business rules/trade, but the scope was originally VERY limited to interstate commerce. I simply don't see how it can be argued against that the purview has pretty distinctly expanded from then on.

If I want to smoke a little pot on the weekends, I am going to do it. If you have a problem with it, I don't care, because you're not invited to my smokeout.

You are treading a dangerous line trying to write lifestyles into law. That's the same school of thought that people that oppose homosexuality and premarital sex use to to justify their unfair restrictions.

Well, if you answered yes, then you used a mind-altering substance / external chemical influence for your personal enjoyment. Don't you deserve jail for this? I mean, shouldn't you have been able resist the urge to intoxicate yourself, and instead pushed yourself in the "right direction" of sobriety? Since you failed at this, we might as well throw the book at you for it, right?

Alternately, if you answered "no" to my above question(s), then you're a liar and you can see yourself out.