BS. It's indicates a larger concern for civil liberties. If a candidate doesn't think that people have the right to put what they want in their own bodies then they have no true concern for civil liberties thus they should automatically be discounted as deserving of support by anyone who understands what it means to be free. And certainly this is not the only reason I support Ron Paul, but for me civil liberties is absolutely a top concern (and the legalization of marijuana is an easy example of these liberties.) I just do not understand Americans who don't care about civil liberties. To me these people are not true Americans. Civil liberties are the basic fabric of what it means to be an American. Everything else is window dressing.
Let me ask you, would you support a candidate who wants to make alcohol illegal? How many people would? Very few. They'd be laughed out of town. You have to understand that refusing to legalize marijuana is just as ridiculous a stance to have. It really is. In fact you can make a strong argument it is more ridiculous because alcohol actually causes many deaths while marijuana does not. Remember alcohol was illegal in the 1920s and that didn't work. In fact it backfired because prohibition created a criminal underground that would not have otherwise existed. It's the same situation with how drug prohibition doesn't work today. People have to stop thinking so small, they have to look at the big picture and put things in context. This small minded "drugs are bad, mmm 'k" mindset is ... just thoroughly disgusting. In the future today's drug prohibition will be seen just as how the alcohol prohibition of the 1920s is seen today, as a relic of an earlier time when reactionary people weren't bright enough to understand what freedom means.
Yes: "The 14th Amendment permits states to deny the vote "for participation in rebellion, or other crime." I also found this: 3.9 million Americans, or one in 50 adults, have currently or permanently lost the ability to vote because of a felony conviction. Some 1.4 million persons, disenfranchised for felony convictions, are ex-offenders who have completed their criminal sentence.