The majority of Americans say marijuana should remain illegal, but they are divided on whether possession of small amounts of the drug should be treated as a criminal offense


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Alison Kadlec
Feb 1, 2012
This post was written for the 20 community colleges participating in Completion by Design, a five-year Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation initiative that aims to significantly increase completion rates for low-income students under 26. As a “National Assistance partner” for Completion by Design, Public Agenda provides direct assistance to the colleges to help them build capacity for solutions-oriented dialogue among faculty, staff and administration. Here, Public Agenda's Alison Kadlec discusses best practices for authentic internal stakeholder engagement. While the post is geared toward Completion by Design planning teams, the principles are useful for any authentic engagement process.
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Allison Rizzolo
Jan 24, 2012
Far too often, throughout our work in the education field, we've seen even the most earnest and promising ideas from experts and reformers for improving schools and ramping up student learning met with confusion, anxiety or even anger from teachers, parents, students or community members.


2011 Public Agenda
Before forming a opinion on something one should thoroughly examine the subject and gain a reasonable amount of experience with the subject before judging it. I feel that a good % of the ladies and gentlemen who participated in this poll have a questionable amount of experience with the subject itself.
The fact that this government reserves the right to tell you what you can and cant put into your body is wrong. and all the people that think that its ok to keep this herb illegal are misinformed, all that does is put a criminal element on the herb which gives people like terrorists and real criminals the means to fund more serious crimes. i think its time for people to wake up and smell the rotten lies that have been fed to us for years. marijuana is not a drug it is a plant that has more uses than any other plant on this earth. Marijuana does no harm to the body in any way other than mild smoke inhalation. Every drug can be abused and all if overdosed on will cause certain death except marijuana. the fact that we put people who use drugs to an extreme in jail instead of rehab, so there in trouble and what does the federal government say, they just throw them away in a prison, make us pay for there room and food and in some cases cable and then they throw them out in society where they now cant hold down a job and are still un-educated on the drugs they abuse. it makes me sick. I really don't understand what happened to this country and our freedoms but s a soldier myself i am disappointed and ashamed that we have let this government run us in the ground and yet there is still people stupid enough to believe them. i think its time for a change, its time to legalize and tax marijuana and send coke heads and heroin heads to rehab instead of a jail, that just seems like a better way to spend those billions of dollars instead of giving it to businesses that got us into this mess to begin with and they still go bankrupt. Our constitution doesn't just give us the right to have a business, it gives you the right to loose on as well.
Marijuana is being used on medical purpose more often lately, but even so in my opinion this light drug shouldn't be legal. Any marijuana rehab center would tell you that this drug can damage your brain if used on long term, and it is also the drug which most of the rehab people start their addiction problem, replacing it later with something more powerful like cocaine or heroine. I think that best thing to do is using prescriptions for the ones who really need to consume it, and let it be illegal for the others.
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