CALIF. LEGISLATORS NEED CLASS AT GANJA U.

Every day California legislators putter around the issue of
decriminalizing marijuana is another day spent squandering economic
opportunities. Facing another year of deep budget deficits that will
negatively impact education, labor and social services, the state can
hardly afford to let this potential cash crop disappear in a plume of
smoke.

State lawmakers have taken a zigzag approach in dealing with the issue
ever since California voters passed Proposition 215 in 1996 to allow
compassionate use for people with medical problems. For the past 13
years, though, Sacramento has been doddered around considering
legalization.

Among several bills slogging through the political arena is State
Assemblyman Tom Ammiano's AB 390. Ammiano's bill would not only
legalize pot so people could grow, sell and possess, it would create a
literal recession-proof revenue stream through taxation.

This should be a prime time to both push for legalization and to place
controls -- such as minimum age requirements, tax tables, university
research funding and regulatory distribution policies -- on the plant.

The U.S. Justice Department issued a directive in October that med-pot
users and distributors in states with compassionate use laws will not
face federal prosecution as long as they are in compliance with state
laws.

The American Medical Association switched direction last month and
urged the federal government to stop categorizing marijuana with
heroin by removing it from Schedule One of the Controlled Substances
Act.

There are currently 13 states that allow medical marijuana and New
York and New Jersey are likely to follow suit. California was the
first, but if it doesn't act to further decriminalize weed, it will be
at the back of the tractor in turning marijuana into a profitable venture.

For example, because of its transition into a medical marijuana
cultivation region, the tiny town of Hayfork in Northern California
has seen its real estate prices rise from $3,500 per lot to $50,000
over the past five years, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Michigan is already leading the charge toward turning marijuana into a
viable industry. Med Grow Cannabis College near Detroit has a fully
developed curriculum for a five-week program to help budding
entrepreneurs develop cultivation and business strategies. Medical pot
has been legal in Michigan for less than a year.

California has its own ganja university system -- Oaksterdam
University -- dedicated to the business end of marijuana. The
progressive two-year-old college's curriculum includes horticulture,
canna-business, methods of ingestion, political science and biology.

California's tax chief estimates the state could earn $1.3 billion or
more per year in taxes, and the number of jobs that could be created
would make an enormous dent in our unemployment lines. The estimated
taxes from a product that grows so cheaply could fill the entire
California State University budget hole.

With all of these indicators showing that laws should be eased on pot,
law enforcement pros are resisting legalization with all of their
might, even when it teeters on abusing power.

For instance, the Los Angeles City Council was primed to pass a
medical pot ordinance last month and L.A. County District Attorney
Steve Cooley told them he would vehemently continue raiding and
prosecuting med-pot dispensaries regardless of any ordinance.

Legalizing pot would also resuscitate our flailing agricultural
systems by opening the fields to the hemp industry, with its many
potentially beneficial byproducts.

In a state that prioritizes its prison industrial complex over higher
education and employment, it's time our elected leaders wake up and
smell the hemp by taking an economics class at "Ganja University."