Marijuana

Wow, I never knew April 20th was the official/unofficial Marijuana holiday. There's even a beauty contest in New York to crown, "Ms. High Times." Hippies from the 60's should be proud. Medical marijuana is legal in 12 states. And with all the recent bailouts legalizing and taxing marijuana sales is fast becoming a hot political topic.

Now I know there are those that consider marijuana to be a gateway drug, but I'm not sure legalizing marijuana is going to increase the sales of cocaine from Mexico.

If marijuana is legalized here, then we could grow it here and effectively cut out the need to import it, while still beefing up security along the Mexican border to stop cocaine smuggling. Legalizing one does not necessarily mean we're going to legalize the other.

If we processed marijuana, like tobacco, and packaged it similarly, that would create jobs. People with jobs pay income tax. People who smoke marijuana would pay sales tax. Clearly we aren't going to keep people from smoking marijuana or we would have accomplished that by now. History has proven that the prohibition of something doesn't really work. That doesn't mean we have to legalize everything, it simply means sometimes we're faced with tough decisions and we have bills we need to pay.

If we overhaul the food stamp program and move it to the Department of Health and Human Services, then the Department of Agriculture could manage marijuana growth and distribution. They could keep it from being laced with other drugs.

The legalizing of medical marijuana in 12 states pretty much proves legalizing marijuana is going to be done on a state by state basis. States who have turned down federal money may find taxing marijuana useful. States with double digit unemployment may find creating jobs similar to the tobacco industry useful.
Not to mention what legalizing marijuana would do for our prison system and its overcrowding problems.

Smoking marijuana doesn't make a person a bad citizen any more than having a glass of wine at dinner would make someone a bad citizen, if marijuana were legal. It's the breaking of laws that make people bad citizens. Maybe it's time we changed some of our laws and helped bad citizens be better. None of our citizens are ever going to be perfect. We're all human. We're going to make mistakes. Do we really have to make it so hard for people who prefer smoking to drinking to be good citizens? After all, in my opinion, marijuana is the lesser of the two evils. I've done my time as the battered wife of an alcoholic, but I've never known anyone to get violent smoking marijuana.

Copyright © 2009 Annette Fortunato

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