The Drug War treats drug crime as more important than violent crime. It treats drug crime as more important than our God-given, Constitutionally protected rights. Ending the Drug War is not about legalization. It is about ending extremism while maintaining a real commitment to solving America's drug problem. The fact is that legalizing marijuana will help protect America's children from LSD, ecstasy, mushrooms, cocaine, heroin and other hard drugs.
Conservatives are absolutely correct in identifying marijuana as a steppingstone drug.
Marijuana is a soft, illegal drug that bridges the gap between soft, legal drugs and hard, illegal drugs. Government propaganda and zero-tolerance policies cannot change the reality that marijuana is a soft drug. The only way to remove marijuana as a steppingstone is to legalize it. This is because the core of the problem lies in the drug use itself. Marijuana legalization will lead to a dramatic decrease in illegal drug use and finally begin to solve the problem.