- 1 - I do NOT smoke weed. PERIOD. I do NOT want to smoke weed. PERIOD.
2 - I do NOT believe that smoking weed makes you a better or worse person.
3 - I do NOT believe that weed makes you suseptible to every other drug on the planet.
4 - I do NOT believe weed makes you commit crimes or become violent but all people react differently so I will not say it is impossible, only highly improbable given my personal experiences with those that do partake.
With those caveats out of the way, let's get on with it.
I have long had issue with the federal government, and state governments, outlawing marijuana. There is no Constitutional basis for the outlawing of it, it was legal up into the 1920s so the change in societal ideas seems to coincide with Prohibition, which I take moral issue with. (If I chose not to do something, that's MY right. However I do NOT believe anyone has the right (nor does society at large) to force others to conform to my beliefs. Outside of a few tenants that are sacrosanct - murder, rape, torture, & generally forcing those who are helpless to protect themselves into doing something they don't want to do, society has no rights to enforce upon you or me or anyone a set of rules that must be followed without deviation.)
The fallacy of a federal government (or any government for that matter) that outlaws a growing plant does NOT escape me. It is a naturally growing, perfectly normal, plant. What a HUMAN does with it after harvesting it should NOT make the plant illegal. Plain & simple common sense dictates that man writing a law on paper holds no sway in the kingdom of Flora & Fauna. This is an absolute. I can outlaw mosquitoes, doesn't mean they're going to go away or give a squirt that I outlawed them. Same for a non-sentient (to currently knowledge any way) plant. It is ludicrous for a man (or group of men) to make a law saying a plant can't grow or be grown. IT OCCURS WITHOUT THOUGHT TO MAN, thus your law against it is pointless & nothing more than political aggrandizement of wanton stupidity. My opinions on political wanton stupidity are for a different day.
The sheer money we spend to keep those who imbibe in the weed in prison every day is staggering & needless waste! The tax payer (you, me & every other honest American but apparently NOT Wesley Snipes - among others) pays for their food, their bed, their clothes, their medicine, their entertainment, their education, their subsidization with work, their physical protection & the creation of NEW prisons in which to keep them. WHAT do we get out of this? NOT A DAMN THING! They don't work on chain gangs so we get no sweat equity. They learn from more hardened criminals how to break the law & not get caught again so we get only hardened criminals coming out. We get the joy of jailhouse lawyers who's only purpose in learning the law is to thwart it or screw over the honest citizens amongst us, so we get ceremonially shit on by those who use as well. We get a backlog of court cases clogging an already busy system, thus preventing the vast majority of defendants to their speedy day in court. We lose countless man hours for police to attempt to catch & punish those who smoke a weed.
What is the difference between marijuana & tobacco? Honestly, on a molecular level to a moral level if you have something to say I welcome it. One would think molecularily they are very different, and while many do get a 'high' off of weed, it isn't a violent one, or a criminal one. It makes you stupid & hungry. Not at all what I would term as a threat to society or even to yourself.
The federal government, including military doctors, PRESCRIBE marijuana to patients with conditions that make them not eat. Be it cancer to adverse effects to other medications, it is prescribed by the employees of the very government that says it's illegal. That hypocrisy has never sat well with me. I'm all for giving a cancer patient something to help them eat, but to give them the very thing that they can't legally buy without cancer eating them alive from the inside out is disturbing to me on a deeply visceral level.
If we were to legalize weed in small quantities, much like they do in the Netherlands, for immediate use at a government sanctioned location/pot hut we would then be able to legally TAX it. The federal government is always moaning it doesn't have enough $$, but goes out of its way to hobble itself in the process.
Weed legalization would see an almost immediate decrease in the number of people in the criminal justice system. They wouldn't be arrested, freeing up Police time & supplies to combat ACTUAL criminals. They wouldn't be found guilty, thus producing yet another mouth for the societal teat to feed.
Weed legalization would allow Police $$ & time & personnel to be better spent tracking actual criminals instead of low end personal users. What I do in my own home is my own business, just as I feel what you do in your home is your business. Animals, children & elderly aside - if you're all consenting adults I don't care! Nor do I want or need to know about it unless I chose to partake in it with you.
Weed legalization would lead to a near to immediate reduction in prison inmates. No one arrested for minor use, means no minor users taking up space! That would DRASTICALLY lower the costs to pay for prisoners. From bedding & clothes to toilet paper to wipe their asses to food to fill their bellies to meds to quiet their aches & pains. From not having to buy the little turds a new XBox or Wii to less electricity because less facilities to lower construction costs, its a win win in my opinion. (Feel free to share yours in the comments, I really do like to hear & see different view points.)
So it would lead to an immediate decrease in prisoner numbers, prison costs, and court costs. It would lead to an immediate upswing in tax income as well.
Thus is my opinion & reasoning behind supporting the legalization of marijuana.
