[mcslee]

Jimmy Carter made an excellent quote about the penalties for drug use.

"Penalties against possession of a drug should not be more damaging to an individual that the use of the drug itself."

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jimmy_Carter

[jibiki]

The counter argument is that this might be true in expectation. If we caught and executed 1 out of every 50 drug users, maybe the rest would stop using. If being on drugs is half as bad as being dead, then on net you've saved 23.5 lives for every 50 users.

This is, of course, a very flimsy argument, which I would not stand by under any circumstances. But I think a better take on the subject would be "penalties against drug possession should be a net win for society", rather than what Carter said.