Does Legalized Marijuana Mean Legalized Heroin and Crack?
Bruce Mirken, Marijuana Policy Project At the Marijuana Policy Project, we hear it all the time: “Well, if you legalize marijuana, doesn’t that mean you’d have to legalize everything? Where does it end?” It’s a common question with a simple answer: It ends with whatever laws that we as a democratic society think make the most sense — no more, and no less. Marijuana, after all, has been in human use as a medicine and social relaxant for at least 5,000 years, and illegal in most parts of the world for less than 100. At no time did marijuana laws have much of an effect on laws regarding other substances. When you think about it, that makes perfect sense. Alcohol is a drug, after all (and a much more dangerous and addictive drug than marijuana, by the way), yet its legality certainly hasn’t meant we have to allow legal access to marijuana or anything else. As our name implies, the Marijuana Policy Project deals only with marijuana. We claim no expertise about other drugs, and take no posi
