William F. Buckley, Jr.

(1925-)

Conservative Scholar, Editor-at-large of The National Review

“Even if one takes every reefer madness allegation of the prohibitionists at face value, marijuana prohibition has done far more harm to far more people than marijuana ever could.”

William F. Buckley is one thoughtful conservative who became convinced Marijuana Prohibition was a total failure in the early 1970’s, and he has maintained that position throughout his illustrious career as an author and television personality. His reasoning was captured in a 1998 filmed discussion with Christopher Hitchens, Contributing Editor at Vanity Fair:

“I'm in favor of legalization of marijuana not because I'm in favor of people being allowed to do what they want to do but because I think that the war against marijuana is not worth it, that more people are suffering on account of that war than would suffer without it...

Suppose we started de novo. Shall we not legalize marijuana? First question. Do people want to use it? Answer is: Some people do. So that's one element that goes into your final decision. Second, what happens if we don't? Well, answer is that it will sell anyway, and that it will cause things like a black market, and then it will cause people to profiteer from the black market. They will engage in crime. Now we know there's 750,000 people who were arrested last year for marijuana. That's extraordinary diversion of effort that might have been put into keeping Mrs. So-and-so from being raped, or Mrs. So-and-so from being murdered. You have to wait six years in New York City to have a civil action come up because the calendar's so clogged by marijuana stuff.”

It is interesting to note that Buckley is not swayed by the anti-prohibitionist arguments which are based on the philosophy of liberty -- he simply observes that Marijuana Prohibition can never be anything but an expensive failure. And he's been right about that for a very long time...