I rarely have anything good to say about Pat Robertson. But the devil-monger deserves his due: I have to commend his call for the legalization of marijuana. Moreover, he cites several good reasons for this stance, including the high cost of prohibition, and the fact that imprisonment of small-time drug dealers and users is “ruining young people.” I suspect that Robertson has begun to realize that the War on Drugs is bad for family values. It will take a lot of good works to make up for all the ridiculous and offensive things that Robertson has said over the years. But helping to end the War on Drugs would be a good start.
As the recent defeat of California’s Proposition 19 shows, the opposition of social conservatives is one of the biggest political obstacles to curtailing drug prohibition. Hopefully, more conservatives will come to the same realization as Robertson and, before him, the far more intellectually respectable William F. Buckley.