Marijuana Legalization

It’s a no-brainer. As long as you’re not driving while smoking it, it should’ve been legalized decades ago. Can’t even begin to tell you how many court cases were tied up over the years because of bullshit possession prosecutions, while the more serious criminal cases remained on the backburner..

Legalize it. Isn’t the better argument over legalizing other drugs, e.g., heroin? That’s way more controversial…

Growers are now working on strains such as Charlotte’s Web, which contains a great deal of canabinoids (CBD) and very little THC. It’s named for a 5 year old girl who needs the CBD for her seizures. The result is a medicine that doesn’t get her high, but helps control her epilepsy.

The catch is, it was developed and grown in Colorado and it cannot be transported across state borders to states that haven’t legalized it yet, even if its final destination is California or Washington. So we’re making progress, but we’re not there yet.

For more info: http://www.leafly.com/sativa/charlottes-web

It’s absurd to ban a plant.

As Greg Geraldo said, “Why is marijuana not legal? It’s a natural plant that grows in the dirt. Do you know what’s not natural? Eighty-year-old dudes with hard-ons. That’s not natural. But we got pills for that. We’re dedicating all our medical resources to keeping the old guys erect, but we’re putting people in jail for something that grows in the dirt?”

Sure why not?! If alcohol is legal and that stuff is ridiculously dangerous and addictive, yes to pot which would wreak less havoc. I will then buy lots of stock in Doritos and Oreos.

So let’s open up a bag of worms — while I agree that marijuana should be legal, we can’t separate the concept from the reality of years of criminalization and the effect its had on only certain strata of society.  Essentially now a bunch of middle class (white) entrepreneurs are making money off a product that has been the cause of incarceration for way too many (often of color) folks without the same means and privilege.   Isn’t this the ultimate in “gentrification”?

How about a tangential question – if MJ is legalized, what about all of the people incarcerated for crimes that would no longer exist? Do they receive a “Get Out of Jail Free” card? How would that work?

In the early part of the 20th century, many believed that banning alcohol sales would cure a number of social ills, but we found that people still abused alcohol, and because the revenue from illegal sales went to the worst elements of society rather than law-abiding businesses, we created new problems that were more severe than the ones we’d hoped to remedy. Eventually we realized that alcohol use wasn’t as problematic as having Al Capone-types running cities. For some reason we don’t see the analogy with respect to other substances whose use or abuse we think we can eliminate by law. We can’t, as the past 70 years or so have shown. It’s makes much more sense to de-criminalize marijuana use and regulate it as we do alcohol. 

weed is lame!!