Time.  The one commodity we can never replace and precisely the commodity that too many Americans are losing, thanks to current marijuana laws.  Time is money, right?  So who’s losing? 

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Farmers and Merchants – Marijuana is extremely useful as a material.  Hemp can be used to create clothes of all textures (as versatile as cotton, more durable, but easier to grow), agricultural feeds, foodstuffs, rope (some of the strongest), and other commodities.  Note that Hemp does not produce the physiological effects of cannabis, its smoke-able cousin, but that it remains illegal for reasons unknown.  The only thing you’ll get from smoking it is a headache, but you can harvest far more per acre than you can cotton.  Hmm… an agricultural commodity that’s superior to cotton, cheaper to grow, easier to grow, more durable, less expensive, and produces profitable by-products as well? 

(Who are the ONLY ones that lose here?  I’ll give you a hint:  You’ve been told that it was the fabric of your life since you were three.  Ever hear of the Butter vs Margarine Wars?  Look it up.  This is today’s version.)

Joe Public – Marijuana, under current law, is a Black Market commodity.  This removes it from the normal laws of supply-and-demand.  While pot can be grown easily, shipped efficiently, and used responsibly by Americans, it cannot be sold safely due only to the laws restricting it.  There is an ever-present demand, and an easily-fulfilled supply; to any economist this would be a risk-free endeavor, but the law has created an “artificial” risk that need not be present.  When the laws get tougher, the risk goes up, the value goes up, and Black Market crime goes up.  When the laws get more permissive, the risk goes down, the value goes down, and crime goes down.  Crime, violence, and robbery is the “pressure” that is created when there is ample supply, and ample demand, but the former is not being allowed to fulfill the latter.  So instead of someone smoking a $2.00 joint in their back yard and enjoying a night on the couch, you’ve got someone taking your $500.00 Blackberry.

Logic tells us that people do not kill people over marijuana any more than they kill them over cigarettes or beer.  People get killed over money.  So while you pay to have otherwise productive and law-abiding citizens locked up for possession of marijuana… while innocent people are having their jobs taken and their livelihoods ruined on the back of a guilty verdict… while you feed, and clothe, and house this “criminal”, whose only crime was to prefer a way of relaxing that didn’t involve a hangover… while people are being killed for the fifty dollars that they brought to buy $2.00 worth of marijuana… the drug lords are making a killing, and they’re plowing it into their crackhouses, and their opium fields, the automatic weapons, and the ever-booming international sex industry.  The Number One thing that lawmakers can do to hurt drug cartels is to legalize marijuana.  It is their cash crop, and the demand never fades.

So the War of Drugs creates the crime, punishes the individual with prison and stigma, punishes the community with the cost of feeding, caring for, and clothing this now-unemployed person, AND puts money into the hands of drug cartels that are pushing the REAL threat at the very same time. 

We could not have gotten this more wrong if we had purposely been trying to.  This is the kind of thing that can only happen in a situation where a rightful thing has been denied, against the moral and logical conscience of humanity itself.  In a fair and just system of law, there is no such thing as a “victimless crime”.  If the crime has no victim, then it should not be illegal.

Patients – Marijuana has been shown in numerous legitimate clinical studies to be beneficial for everything from glaucoma to diabetes.  It reduces nausea in cancer patients.  It reduces pain in patients with neurological condition.  It reduces ocular pressure in patients suffering from glaucoma.  It relieves and reduces stress in those coming off of addictions.  It stimulates the appetite of terminal cancer patients.  All with fewer side effects, and a safety record far superior to, the aspirin you just took.  We’ll spend $50 billion dollars on a new treatment for flatulence that may result in heart failure… but we condemn such a treatment?  How is this even vaguely logical?  How is this responsible, acceptable, or in keeping with a free society?

The most significant side-effect of marijuana is a vague sense of paranoia and nausea in some, although in most individuals marijuana suppresses the feeling of nausea.  Therefore, it should never be combined with alcohol.  It is physically impossible to ingest enough of the marijuana plant to reach toxic levels; it would be like trying to get alcohol poisoning on vanilla extract.  You are sound asleep long before you are dead.

The most significant after-effect of marijuana (that is, where you would normally have a hangover) is being tired.  If you smoke today, you may (MAY) feel a little tired tomorrow.

Marijuana does not cause crime to go up; crime is up because marijuana has been criminalized against the will and logic of the masses.  Crack is self-regulating… you either go broke or die to the addiction.  Heroine is self-regulating… you either go broke or die to the addiction.  Marijuana has been used responsibly by millions of people in America for their entire lives, and they never go broke (because marijuana is not addictive), nor do they die to their addiction.  It should be clear who the real enemies are in the war on drugs.  

Marijuana is not a “gateway” drug.  This is propaganda and has always been.  Marijuana use does not lead to cocaine use, just as driving a car does not lead to flying a plane.  In the broader War on Drugs, against true threats like Cocaine, Heroine, PCP, and Meth, marijuana has been caught up and thrown in against all fact and logic.  The “high” that many marijuana users enjoy can only be diminished by the “high” brought on by strong chemical drugs.  Many users choose to forgo even alcohol while smoking marijuana.  Yes, there are exceptions to every rule… but they are just that; exceptions.  The vast majority of marijuana users have no intention, and will never, progress to “harder” forms of drugs.

The supply will never, ever go away, precisely because of how easy it is to grow even top-grade marijuana.  In a black-market economy, it is far too profitable NOT to grow it.  Those who want it, teens included, are already smoking it.  Those who are not, would not after it’s legalized.

The demand will never, ever go away, precisely because people know that its safety record is superior to alcohol; that its addictive potential is non-existent; that the effects produced are often more pleasant than alcohol, while simultaneously being more “manageable” than alcohol, and that they will not get a hangover from marijuana. 

So the only question left, Mr. Senator, Mr. President, Mr. Tax Payer, is: 

WILL YOU legalize it, TAX it, and help us get out of this unimaginable deficit that we are in, while simultaneously and sincerely doing the RIGHT thing by keeping honest people out of prisons and employed despite what you may personally find a distasteful pursuit?

Or…

WILL YOU continue to support the incarceration of innocent people and the restriction of human rights, the suppression of industry and the unjustifiable millions of dollars in the Criminal Justice system, all based on outdated hysteria similar in EVERY aspect to the Prohibition with NO facts to base it upon?

Nobody steals their mama’s TV to buy marijuana… but they’ve had to put up the house to make bail.  Innocent people are suffering in a criminal justice system that they do not belong in.  Taxpayers are shelling out millions each year for The System to prosecute and persecute, render homeless and re-house those unfortunate enough to get caught.  Government is missing out on hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenue from sales of marijuana, applying the tax instead to your juice, your gas, your fruit, your milk, and your corn flakes, while the deficit steadily grows deeper. 

Write a Senator and tell a friend.  It is way past time that common sense won out over private interests.