LEGALIZED POT COULD REDUCE DEFICIT

Since 1937, marijuana has been an illegal substance in the United
States. In recent years, there has been some resurgence of dissenters
to this law, but even today they are generally cast aside as
"potheads" or as immoral and radical.

Yet, after examining the facts, I realized that I too found myself an
advocate of legalizing marijuana. In fact, I began to think that, in a
time of recession and deficit like the present, perhaps we can't
afford not to.

The first argument that comes to mind is that marijuana can be used
for medicinal purposes and laws restricting its use do nothing but
cause needless suffering.

Those in search of pot for medical uses aren't crazy teenagers; they
are the elderly. Those who consider using it are often terminally ill.

It seems to me rather odd that we see no problem in dishing out
Vicodin or morphine, but marijuana is for some reason a line we can't
cross.

The next argument is that it is against the foundational American
principle of liberty for the government to restrict the use of
something people do in their own homes that harms no one else and,
arguably, doesn't even harm the users.

Let's assume momentarily that marijuana is harmful to the user. This
is no reason to make it illegal. Tobacco and alcohol are both clearly
dangerous to those who use them and, in the case of driving under the
influence, alcohol becomes quite dangerous to others in society.

Yet, we agree regardless that alcohol should be legal because it
should be the people's choice to harm themselves if they wish, as we
live in a free nation. To restrict marijuana for being harmful is to
turn around and contradict this very idea.

Moreover, marijuana isn't harmful!

Unlike alcohol, there is no possible way to consume too much. There
are more deaths annually from aspirin overdoses than from marijuana
overdoses, according to drugwarfacts.org, an extension of the
nonprofit Common Sense for Drug Policy.

The third argument is, to me, the most convincing.

States spend more money on each prisoner than they do on each public
school student. California is now said to spend more on prisons than
it does on schools altogether, according to The Huffington Post
(http://tinyurl.com/2a4z5en) and The Sacromento Bee
(http://tinyurl.com/2f2u85f).

A clear way to reduce government spending is to reduce the number of
prisoners. We wouldn't need to pay for their prison expenses, and we
could tax their income as working members of society.

Looking at the Uniform Crime Reports, drug crimes account for more
arrests than any other crime. Moreover, marijuana arrests are a
majority of drug crime arrests.

The United States has more prisoners than any other country in the
world, including India and China, according to the seventh edition
World Prison Population List.

If marijuana were legal, we could empty out our prisons.

We wouldn't be releasing Barabbases into our society. Men and women
who have done nothing but possess a harmless drug in the privacy of
their own homes are in prison as you read this.

This is clearly a big issue, and I've barely scratched the surface,
but I hope I've given you something to think about.