The popularity of the idea of marijuana legalization is growing… it now may have the majority of US citizens in favor of it:
56% Favor Legalizing, Regulating Marijuana
I have no use for the stuff myself (nor any use for booze or tobacco… but put a well-made cookie in front of me and WATCH OUT), but I’m all in favor of legalizing it. I’ve seen people get stond and I’ve seen people get drunk (hey, I went to college), and on the whole the stoners were safer and less annoying than the drunks. Those who smoke pot usually seem to fall into three categories:
1) Stoners. They get lethargic.
2) Regular schmoes. They get mellow.
3) People who smoke and get paranoid. Not a lot of repeat offenders in that case, I’d imagine.
But with booze, you get:
1) Happy drunks
2) Chatty drunks
3) Sad drunks
4) Mean drunks
And the last two categories, especially #4, are a greater societal problem than the stoners are by a wide margin.
But even if you still think that pot is an Evil Drug, even if you – erroneously – see it as a Gateway Drug (see NOTE), there are some damned fine reasons to still support legalization.
1) You promptly defund criminal organizations (not only local drug dealers, but also international criminal organizations like the Zeta and MS13… with the side benefit that with one of their main sources of income gone, they will be less capable of operations to smuggle cocaine, heroin, illegal aliens or other equally dangerous substances).
2) You increase tax revenues, and provide increased job opportunities here in the US for growers and others in the industry
3) You reduce the tax burden, since there are far fewer criminals to catch, try and jail
4) You can monitor and control the quality of the pot, thus reducing the risk of pot laced with other drugs, or with various toxins
5) You decriminalize the smokers. The value of this should not be underestimated: if you take an otherwise good person who likes to smoke dope and make it clear to him that he’s a criminal… he will very likely be somewhat less interested in being a Good Citizen.
And… you can help defund and defang the United States Federal Government. Why is this import? Here’s why:
Piratical feds, town police trying to take couple’s hotel
Short form: a family owned hotel (built by the current owners father in 1955) is likely to be stolen by the cops and auctioned off. Why? Because there have been thirty arrests at that hotel since 1994 on drug dealing charges… and the DEA has determined that this means that the hotel has been used to facilitate these crimes. Note that the owners are not under arrest or even under suspicion for any crime. Note that thirty arrests out of 125,000 room rentals over that time equate to an impressively small fraction. Note that the local police department is expected to receive 80% of the proceeds from the auction. Note that if the hotel is auctioned off to another hotel owner or a chain, and they continue to operate it as a hotel… then it will stand every chance of being stolen by the feds *again* at some point.
Note also that I have no idea if those thirty drug dealing arrests were all for pot, or none for pot. For all I know they were all for crystal meth. But even so, the ridiculous and fundamentally anti-American “War On Drugs” is being used by the government to ruin lives and increase its power to ruin even *more* lives.
NOTE: Whatever value pot has as a “gateway drug” it has because the only way to get it is, for most people, to go to the criminal element… just the type of people who will also try to get you hooked on other, nastier drugs.