BIG DADDY: SHOULD WE LEGALIZE IT?

Hey Big Daddy, This week, the governor said it was time for a debate
on legalizing marijuana. Is this the way out of our budget crisis?
- --Inquisitive in Ione

Hey Inquisitive, It's amazing what happens when social mores come
into conflict with fiscal circumstances. Guess who usually wins those
ones. That said, you've got to hand it to the governor for at least
suggesting we have a debate on the issue. This gives the knee-jerk
folks something to overreact to, and the stoner advocates cause for
premature celebration. But really, does anybody think smoking pot is
worse that drinking alcohol?

Of course, what I think doesn't matter. But the collective lack of
response from Californians, at least lack of initial response, means
that the state's residents have a rather blase attitude about
legalizing pot or that their so focused trying to make ends meet and
they've become immune or totally indifferent to anything that may
seep out of the governor's mouth these days.

Perhaps it's some combination of the two.

In any event, the short answer is that we're not going to legalize
pot any time soon. Heck, use of marijuana has essentially been
decriminalized in San Francisco. Walk down Market St. on any given
day, and you're likely to get a whiff of funny smoke. And it's just
as likely to be eminating from the young lady in the Chanel suit as
it is the homeless guy on the broken mountain bike. Call it a sign of
the times.

Heck, we sure have come a long way since the times when smoking a
little pot disqualified you for the U.S. Supreme Court. Now, we have
a president who openly admitted to using cocaine in his 20s - a fact
that rarely came up on the campaign trail. Whether or not that's
progress, I'll let you decide, gentle reader.

That collective shrug when it comes to an individual's drug use is
becoming more and more common. That said, this is low-priority. Sure,
the advocates will point to the tax revenues the state could receive
from legalizing pot. And we'll get lots of bad jokes about additional
sales tax revenues on Oreos and Ben and Jerrys. But trust me on this
one: On the homeland security color scale, this is a Code Purple
issue. Given a choice between this and a Assembly floor speech, the
floor speech is probably more important. That's how low priority this is.

Really, all this talk about legalizing pot should be taken about as
seriously as a Brett Favre retirement announcement. But kudos to the
governor for at least speaking his mind on this one. There's nothing
more galling than politicians who think one thing privately and turn
around and say something entirely different for political expediency.
Not many people can accuse Schwarzenegger of doing that. As of now,
the governor is in a sort of political netherworld, without many
loyal friends from either political party. And that has only made him
more candid, in some ways. In fact, that may be the one thing people
around here actually miss about the guy once he's gone.