LEGALIZATION OF POT NOT REALISTIC; BILL'S LOFTY ASPIRATIONS LIKELY TO FAIL

Californians, it's time to get high.

Well, that is if a California assemblyman gets his way. Last week,
Assemblyman Tom Ammiano of San Francisco introduced a bill that would
make the recreational use of marijuana legal, according to an article
in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Ammiano has called the bill a good thing for our struggling state, as
it's geared toward reducing the debt California currently is in.

So, how would legalizing a drug that obviously inhibits its residents
help the state? Taxes of course.

The bill proposes a $50-an-ounce tax on retail sales of weed, which
would come to $1.3 billion per year in revenues, according to an
article in the San Francisco Chronicle.

The article also stated legalizing the drug would drop its street
value by 50 percent and increase usage by 40 percent.

Fabulous. Now even law abiding citizens may change their tune and
finally roll a fatty.

But this bill has larger problems than that. And its largest: the
slim chance it is going to pass.

Weed has been outlawed for more than 70 years, and that prohibition
has come against opposition many times before. Granted, we are in the
"forward-thinking" state of California, but if our progressive
culture won't even legalize gay marriage, I'm sure legalizing weed is
going to be shot down pretty quickly.

The bill also goes against something that most Californians have been
working toward for years - a healthier state.

"I think the outcome would be very healthy for California and
California's economy," Ammiano said in an article in the San
Francisco Chronicle.

Well Mr. Assemblyman, I disagree.

We have forced fast food chains to give us nutritional information on
packages, banned trans fats and outlawed smoking in most public places.

For everything that California has strived to get in legislation for
a healthier state, legalizing something that is toxic to the body
definitely does not follow those lines.

But I guess smoking weed must not be as bad as those other things.

There is always the bright side of this issue: The legalization of
weed would definitely save money when it comes to court and prison
costs. In 2007, California reported over 16,000 felony and over
57,000 misdemeanor arrests for marijuana, according to an article in
the Sacramento Bee.

If legalized, all of the money spent on housing, feeding and
prosecuting offenders could be put toward our growing budget deficit.

Cannabis was legal in the United States until 1937 when Congress
passed the Marijuana Tax Act, outlawing the drug at the federal
level, according to the Daily Star. Then, in 1970, Congress passed
the Controlled Substances Act and classified weed as a Schedule-I
drug, the most serious category of drugs, which also includes heroin.

Schedule-I drugs are classified in the act as substances that have no
medical use and cannot be prescribed by a physician, according to the
L.A. Times. That's funny, especially since California has a law that
legalizes marijuana for medical purposes.

I am not an expert at the effect of drugs on a body, but I think it's
safe to say heroin should be in a much higher, and more dangerous
class than weed. I have heard of a bunch of people dying from heroin
overdoses, but no deaths by marijuana come to mind.

Pretty much, this bill is going nowhere. It's never going to pass,
and anyway, why would someone pay tax on weed from a store when they
can get it cheaper from their neighbor?