"Support for legalizing marijuana grows rapidly around U.S."

The title of this post is the headline of this piece from today's Washington Post.  Here are a few excerpts:

At last week's International Drug Reform Conference, activists gamed specific proposals for taxing and regulating pot along the lines of cigarettes and alcohol, as a bill pending in the California Legislature would do. The measure is not expected to pass, but in urging its serious debate, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) gave credence to a potential revenue source that the state's tax chief said could raise $1.3 billion in the recession, which advocates describe as a boon.

There were also tips on lobbying state legislatures, where measures decriminalizing possession of small amounts have passed in 14 states. Activists predict half of states will have laws allowing possession for medical purposes in the near future.

Interest in medical marijuana and easing other marijuana laws picked up markedly about 18 months ago, but advocates say the biggest surge came with the election of Barack Obama, the third straight president to acknowledge having smoked marijuana, and the first to regard it with anything like nonchalance. "As a kid, I inhaled," Barack Obama famously said on the campaign. "That was the whole point."

In office, Obama made good on a promise to halt federal prosecutions of medical marijuana use where permitted by state law. That has recalibrated the federal attitude, which had been consistently hostile to marijuana since the early 1970s, when President Richard Nixon cast aside the recommendations of a presidential commission arguing against lumping pot with hard drugs.

Some recent related posts:

• "Attorney General Announces Formal Medical Marijuana Guidelines"
• California moving on various fronts toward possible legalization of marijuana
• "U.S. Support for Legalizing Marijuana Reaches New High"
•  A potent pitch for decriminalizing marijuana
• "Medical Marijuana Muddle"
• Republican governor signals openness to legalizing marijuana
• "Marijuana Nation: The New War Over Weed"
• More calls for an end to the drug war and legalization of marijuana
• New poll has majority saying alcohol is more dangerous than marijuana
• AMA changes its position to be more open to medical marijuana