THE REAL 'REFER MADNESS' IN CALIFORNIA IS NOT LEGALIZING MARIJUANA

It seems the governor is finally listening to the more than half of
California residents who support the legalization of marijuana.

This week, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said it's not time for action,
just chatter. He suggested a dialogue should start and "we ought to
study very carefully what other countries are doing that have
legalized marijuana and other drugs, what affect it had on those
countries, and are they happy with that decision."

We should start by telling the truth about marijuana. Stop feeding us
a cleaned up, not-so-obvious version of "Refer Madness"-esque propaganda.

For instance, the absurd commercials that push ridiculousness into
our faces have got to go. For those who don't know what I'm talking
about, here's an example. A teenager comes home and her dog starts a
conversation with her. He tells her he wants her to stop smoking pot
because she's not the same and he wants his friend back.

It's apparent the dog represents a friend who is afraid of
confronting her about smoking. But a talking dog? Talking dogs are
for children -- very small children. Don't tell me someone out there
actually thought a teenager might look at that and have an "Aha" moment.

Furthermore, pot is not a gateway drug and does not cause you to rape
or kill. We can start seriously talking about legalizing this drug
after the myths are cleared up, once and for all.

State Assemblyman, Tom Ammiano (D) San Francisco, brings Bill AB 390
to the people of this great state. The Marijuana Control, Regulation,
and Education Act states it would "legalize the possession, sale,
cultivation, and other conduct relating to marijuana and its
derivatives by persons 21 years of age and older ... It would set up
a wholesale and retail marijuana sales regulation program."

Schwarzenegger said the only ways to solve our budget problems are to
cut spending and raise taxes. If Californians were allowed to legally
puff we would achieve both -- simultaneously. The state would gain by
taxing the green stuff and could cut spending by decriminalizing the
substance, releasing thousands of prisoners and preventing future
wasteful arrests.

The bill essentially calls for marijuana to be treated like alcohol.
This seems appropriate considering we are in the worst economic times
since the Great Depression, which happened around the same time as
Prohibition. The problems of the 1920s and '30s were similar to our
problems today -- just substitute alcohol with weed.

Clearly, Prohibition took money directly from the states. Because
alcohol was illegal and still in demand, gangsters and violence
thrived. The millions of dollars that went into gangsters' pockets
could have gone to the governments. The Volstead Act made criminals
out of regular, everyday people. Let's just say most people on this
campus would be in trouble if Prohibition were still the law.

Think what it would be like if weed were legal. Hundreds of thousands
of people arrested each year would be free. According to
Socialworker.org, the last 10 years saw close to 15 million people
arrested for weed, 89 percent of those 'criminals' were charged with
simple possession.

The state paid an average annual operating cost of $22,650 per inmate
in 2001, according to various government websites. That's a lot of savings.

Today, we are in the midst of a drug war -- and an expensive one to
boot. We are creating criminals because we are not thinking logically.