In a story that's getting shockingly little local coverage (read: zero), Norman Kent, a Ft. Lauderdale-based lawyer and former college buddy of conservative local Sentaor Norm Colman, recently published an article on Alternet alleging that the currently harshly anti-drug Senator once smoked plenty of pot. And given most of the legislation the esteemed Sentaor supports, I wouldn't doubt that he's still using it quite frequently.
Sentaor Colman has yet to respond to the accusation of former pot-head-ness, but it's a pretty believable story: man smokes a bunch of pot during college, goes on to successful private career, and then gains easy votes by denouncing his former pasttime. And as most social survey ecidence shows that many Americans are regular marijuana users and the majority of Americans have at least tried it, this story serves as a great exemplar of a disturbing wider societal trend--while many, if not most, Americans are using marijuana, we are at the same time incarcerating folks at the highest clip in the world, most of whom are just coincidentally poor and/or ethnic/racial minorities.
At this point in the "debate" I basically feel like we're arguing with the anti-evolutionists. If all the evidence in the world points to the fact that marijuana is non-harmful (or at the very least, far much less so than two other widely-available and legal drugs you may know of) and completely non-addictive and yet you refuse to believe that and argue for its continued legal ban, then there's obviously nothing that can be said to convince you otherwise.
But man, when they discover new dinosaur bones next to primitive dinasuar-sized bongs, Norm Coleman and the rest of those folks sure are going to be pissed.
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