>For all my conservative rantings, I agree that the "war on drugs" is totally misguided. It seems we didn't learn a lesson from Prohibition. I don't know what liquor and tobacco taxes bring in a year, but it seems we could do something similar with marijuana. Limit personal production to a set amount (I think home-brewed beer is untaxed to fifty gallons in Texas, anything over that you cross into a commercial product), slap a tax on the rest.
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>Coke, heroin, and some of the other hard stuff I have mixed feelings about. We've made a mess of our southern-hemispheric neighbors trying to get them to eradicate cocoa production, and Bolivia just elected a president who ran on a platform of allowing cocoa growing. So maybe that's allowed too, but it has some bad long-term effects. Meth - that stuff's just plain evil, but having to sign for a box of Psuedafed in the drug store is pretty silly. I don't know what the right answer for those types of drugs are, but the "war on drugs" is definitely not working; it's time we looked at alternatives.

"Cocoa" is chocolate.

Here in Bolivia they claim that "coca is not cocaine", which may technically be true, but much of the coca eventually is used to produce cocaine. On the other hand, the coca leaves are chewed directly; I assume the leaves have a small amount of cocaine, but not enough to get high on.

It should also be remembered that coca is part of the culture - it has been used traditionally, perhaps for a thousand years or more.

It seems that Evo Morales wants to legalize the production of the Coca leaf, but at the same time, wants to go against drug trafficking.