Legalizing Pot at Home

Whether or not a person should have the right to use marijuana if he wishes has been hotly debated, of course, across American dinner tables for years. States and municipalities have wrestled with the issue and are increasingly liberalizing laws against personal use. In Oregon, for example, someone caught taking the drug gets off with a fine of $100 at most. Last week Alaska went a good deal further by becoming the first state where the use of marijuana at home was legalized. However, the unanimous ruling by the state's supreme court also continued prohibitions against the sale or public use of the drug.

Approving the private use of pot, Chief Justice Jay Rabinowitz declared: "The state cannot impose its own notions of morality, propriety or fashion on individuals when the public has no legitimate interest in the affairs of those individuals." With a touch of frontier spirit and pride, Rabinowitz elaborated: "Our territory and now state has traditionally been the home of people who prize their individuality and who have chosen to live here in order to achieve a measure of control over their own life styles, which is now virtually unattainable in many of our sister states."

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