EVERYBODY MUST GET STONED?

When The Going Gets Tough, Politicians Turn To Pot, And They'Re Bound
To Screw It Up

Maybe it's just me, but whenever I find mainstream newspapers,
cash-strapped politicians and libertarian think tanks all on the same
page, I tend to get suspicious. Almost nothing good can come from
this axis of weasels. Such is the case with the recent calls for
legalizing marijuana, which is being billed as some sort of great
awakening but in fact is nothing more than another attempt to pick
the people's pocket.

Oh yeah, we've come a long way, baby. Back in the 1980s, Reagan
administration drug czar Carlton Turner informed us that "Marijuana
leads to homosexuality, the breakdown of the immune system, and
therefore to AIDS." No doubt Turner would have to revise the
statement in the present environment, perhaps something along the
lines of "Marijuana leads to homosexuality ... and therefore to gay
marriage. Not that there's anything wrong with that."

My point is, have any of these formerly square-headed yahoos actually
considered the hard-core ramifications of out and out legalization of
cannabis? According to surveys, some 100 million Americans say
they've smoked weed. What happens when all of them spark up blunts at
the same time? Do we even have the resources to support such an endeavor?

For example, imagine 100 million people having a simultaneous attack
of the munchies. Treasury bonds and Wall Street equities would
suddenly pale in comparison to the breakfast cereal aisle at the
local supermarket. There'd no doubt be a run on Cap'n Crunch, and
Quaker Oats would have to start up a third shift to meet the demand.
It'd be great for the food industry, but the already out-of-control
obesity epidemic is certain to snowball.

Visine stores would at first be stretched tighter than Joan Rivers'
face, before snapping back like an errantly hooked bungee cord. As is
well-known, the national eyewash supply peaked in the 1970s, when
widespread marijuana use first became prevalent. Visine sales would
accelerate with the legalization of marijuana, then violently crash
as everyone realizes that everyone else's eyes are red, too.

We can also expect the wages of glass blowers to plummet as the
market becomes glutted with handmade smoking paraphernalia.

Fortunately--and all kidding aside--cooler heads are prevailing for
the moment, at least at the federal level. At first, I was
disappointed when the U.S. Justice Department failed to intervene in
the case of Charles Lynch, the Southern California medical-marijuana
collective operator who was raided by the Drug Enforcement
Administration in 2007, convicted in federal court last August and
sentenced to one year and one day in federal prison last week. Now,
I'm not so certain.

Even though President Barack Obama pledged to leave medical-marijuana
regulation up to the states during the campaign, even though Attorney
General Eric Holder insists that it is now federal policy, even
though I think Lynch and anyone else busted by the feds while
operating entirely within state guidelines should be freed
immediately, I now believe the slow and steady approach is
appropriate, especially in the case of carte blanche legalization.

Here's why: Laugh if you must, but medical marijuana is no joke. It's
serious medicine that provides relief for countless maladies, from
chronic pain to mental illness, for millions of people. Visit any
medical-marijuana collective, and you're going to find some very sick
individuals. Many of these patients have been politically active in
the cause for years, and collectively they've shaped a culture of
caring and solidarity that's the antithesis of mainstream medicine.

To my mind, it is this culture of caring and solidarity that is
really at stake here. California's medical-marijuana policy did not
appear overnight; it's the product of decades of grassroots activism.
Now that the economy's gone south, everybody wants a piece of the
action? It's true that local, state and federal governments can rake
in billions taxing cannabis. But with so much at stake, we may want
to think twice before succumbing to the disingenuous whims of the
very same fickle, desperate bureaucrats who got us into this mess in
the first place.