Asking those who smoke dope if it should be made legal is like asking the foxes to count the chickens. Of course, they will be saying it should be legally available.
In a radio interview, a dealer in marijuana said that yes making it legal would be a good idea and, yes there should be an age limit for purchasing but did not seem to see this was at odds with his willingness to sell it to anyone, regardless of their age at the moment.
The dissonance of this position rang like a bell and clanged on in my thoughts for some time as a reminder that many who do smoke dope regularly are themselves not the best judges of what may or may not be good for others.
Some years ago, there was a strong movement pushing for possession of small amounts of cannabis for personal use to be managed as a minor offence – like the equivalent of a parking ticket. The idea was that you could still get busted for having bags of the stuff and selling it to others.
This was a reasonable approach. It came unstuck because those touting this law change were listening to ideas of what constituted a 'small amount for personal use' provided by users who wanted this 'small' amount to be far larger that was actually reasonable so the concept collapsed under the weight of over indulgent self-interest.