Eight states at this point had decriminalized the possession of small amounts of

marijuana, and Mr. Gottfried had been the principal sponsor of a bill to do the same in New York; Mr. Mahoney had spearheaded the successful effort to defeat that bill. Mr. Buckley, who agrees with his friend Mr. Mahoney on most things, takes Mr. Gottfried's side in this thoughtful discussion of the medical and legal issues. WFB: "Since more people die from smoking cigarettes than from taking heroin, why would it not follow from your reasoning that the smoking of cigarettes ought to be proscribed?" JDM: "Well, among other easy distinctions, I think that there's a marked propensity among heroin users to become addicted, to go out and rob--" WFB: "But only because heroin is expensive, which it wouldn't be if it were legal." JDM: "... You might find statistically that more people die from jogging than from taking heroin, but you wouldn't make jogging criminal because of the percentages."