In 1994, my arguments to legalize marijuana were dismissed by most people as crazy fringe ramblings. For the next two and a half decades, I witnessed judges and prosecutors work together to imprison countless peaceful people, our brothers and sisters, for possessing, transporting, selling or growing a plant that countless competent and peaceful adults wanted. We the taxpayers have financially supported that hugely expensive effort the entire time. We can only guess at how many real criminals remain on the streets because precious law enforcement resources were wasted chasing down and prosecuting such peaceful people then often ruining their lives. 

Merely singing songs about freedom and waiving flags is irrelevant to a free society. We need to walk the walk. Especially if you don't use marijuana, you should enthusiastically support marijuana legalization for competent adults. Until we accept that competent adults have a right to do peaceful things we personally find immoral, unhealthy or unwise, we will never truly have a free society. We need to think much bigger.

Arizona should have led on this issue. Instead, we waited to see how marijuana legalization would work out in other states first. We cowardly watched other states legalize marijuana without experiencing any of the claimed horrors loudly trumpeted by the anti-freedom crowd. Without learning the lessons of alcohol prohibition, we were doomed to repeat the same mistakes and we did.

The lesson here isn't simply that marijuana should be legal for competent adults. There is a much bigger lesson for us to finally learn. If we actually want a free society, we need to urgently adopt a live-and-let-live attitude towards our fellow competent and peaceful adult brothers and sisters on all issues. We simply can't continue to tolerate an endless struggle between different groups each attempting to impose their particular moral views on us all through the mechanisms of law. Aren't you tired of this endless political struggle?