GETTING LIT DESTINED TO BECOME LEGAL?

If you knew anyone who started smoking pot anytime from the 60s to
roughly the end of American occupation in Vietnam, then you could
assume fairly accurately where they stood politically, that they wore
patchouli, and had cued up Dark Side of the Moon to The Wizard of Oz
at least once after it came out. But in contemporary culture, the
tendency to get torched has chiefly found its way into intellectual
circles, much as opium and its derivative laudanum had in the
Romantic and Victorian era political and literary radicals. We've
come a long way from a "reefer madness" society, and pot being merely
a left-wing counterculture, and yet the topic remains a contentious
issue throughout America.

In a conservative effort to reduce costs of the criminal justice
system - prisons having long been overcrowded - a more liberal action
may be taken after reinvestigating punishments for nonviolent
offenders. Yes, that may mean reducing sentences or perhaps even
decriminalizing drug offenders, although the proposed committee plans
to look into more than just incarceration rates. The bill for the
commission is championed by Senator Jim Webb, a Vietnam vet and
former secretary of the Navy, and it has strong bipartisan support in
the both the Judiciary Committee and the Crime and Drugs Subcommittee.

Considering that in just seven years, from 1984 to 1991, the prison
population for drug-related crimes increased five fold, the issue is
long overdue for a solution.

The year 1996 saw the first laws relaxing restraints on marijuana
use, in California and Arizona, legalizing the plant for medicinal
use, and has since spread to a total of 13. Given the proven
advantages of medicinal marijuana, among the list reducing eye
pressure in glaucoma patients, muscle spasms in multiple sclerosis
patients, and restoring chemo or AIDS patients' appetites - with no
viable or effective alternative - it's appalling the number of states
that have yet to legalize marijuana for this function. Not to mention
the drastically lower toxicity of the chemicals, mainly THC, in
comparison to drugs prescribed for the aforesaid ailments.

Therefore, it's not so much this issue as the decriminalization and
personal use legalization of the drug with which I will concern myself.

The ground for opposition to the drug still comes predominately from
morally imperious right-wingers. The last government study into
America 's drug policy dates back to the Nixon presidency, when the
Schafer Commission recommended he decriminalize marijuana. You don't
need to guess what his answer was.

In the first online Town Hall meeting a few weeks ago, questions from
all over the nation flooded whitehouse.gov about the advantages to
the economy from legalizing marijuana. Not only did President Obama
brush off the proposition, but he threw in a little quip, saying "I
don't know what this says about the online audience." Of all people,
Obama should realize the changing face of marijuana smokers, our
leader himself so unabashedly admitting in his autobiography not only
to marijuana use, but cocaine.

It's time we get past the image of pot turning vulnerable young teens
into hooligans and whores, and realize not only the advantages, but
also lack of disadvantages compared to any of the nation's legal
drugs such as tobacco or alcohol. Holding onto tradition for
tradition's sake is not enough reason to fill our prisons with
clearly innocuous offenders, or forfeit the potential $40 to $100
billion in tax revenues (estimated by Stephen Easton of the Fraser
Institute) - California's Board of Equalization estimates $400
million in tax revenue for the state alone.

So let's face the truth. The moral minority is not the biggest loser
here - just like cigarette smokers, buyers of the hallucinogenic herb
are more than likely going to be the most disappointed if
legalization occurs, on account of the inevitable price hike. It'll
probably be cheaper than a possession fine or prison sentence though.