(For those interested in these sorts of things, the newspaper headline is “Puff by puff, a puritan land is learning not all drugs are evil”–KSH<\/i>.<\/p>\n
I got a text the other day from a close friend. He was excited. \u201cI just bought legal weed in Colorado! A small step for me but a giant leap for mankind. They had a huge line. All dudes. Busy all day every day, the women behind the counter said.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n
And here\u2019s the thing. My friend is not a slacker. He\u2019s a father of two, a hugely successful media entrepreneur with a constant stream of ideas, arguments and facts. He\u2019s hard to keep up with on most days we spend together, and he\u2019s a near fanatic on the need to legalise cannabis across the US.<\/p>\n
He represents in one small way a seismic social shift in America on the status and use of some recreational drugs. To give you a simple example, the Pew Research Centre just released an extensive study of attitudes toward drugs and found the following statistic: 67% of Americans favour treatment rather than prison for users of hard drugs. In 2001, the country was evenly divided, 47% versus 45%, on the question of harsh minimum sentences for drug offenders. Today, we\u2019re in a different universe.<\/p>\n