Why Legalize Marijuana?

Two innocent unlucky people were killed by an alleged drunken motorist yesterday in the Peoria area. My heart goes out to the survivors of this tragedy.This nation loses approximately 42,000 lives per year in vehicular accidents. Far to many of these accidents have liquor involvement. Yet prohibition was tried and failed badly. People will drink and get drunk, prohibition or not. Not all people who are drunk, drive and have accidents. Almost all people who drink, drive.

People will use marijuana, legal or not. This drug can be bought in 15 minutes or less in any city in the country. Do the users know it is harmful to themselves? Most do but they think they are invincible and bad things happen to other users, not to them. Most users can handle the immediate harm just like all alcohol users can handle alcohol.

Most of the blue noses will say, "no way, legalize marijuana". (many of their kids, friends and acquaintances smoke a narcotic, cigarettes, cigars, pipes, etc., all can be deadly habits, and use marijuana). They usually don't get drunk in public nor smoke illegal marijuana in public.Kids can fool their parents quite easily by lying if asked if they do certain things considered problematic to their health. Most all kids have some type of sexual encounter in their teens and many do not tell their parents or they lie to them.

But the blue noses are slowly losing the battle to people who think like me. I have never used illegal drugs. I seldom drink. I have no desire or need to use either. But I do know many people who use one or both, many times as "closet drinkers or marijuana users".

Many who are employed in eradication of marijuana do not want to see it legalized for fear of losing their jobs. The marijuana producers, distributors and dealers, join the bluenoses and frightened legislators, in efforts to stop legalization.

The benefits of of legalization are immense. Employment would rise drastically as money freed up from those employed in eradication, arrests, incarceration, etc., would be employed in preventative education, rehab of those who would find support in stopping or at least curtailing their personal usage

Illegal drugs today are used and distributed with no taxes to the governments. Tax revenues would have many uses including training and employing people to teach mandatory preventative education of those who would no longer be illegal buyers, rehab including job training and help in securing jobs for those coming off addiction; many times, with criminal records involving marijuana that prevent them from getting a living wage job.

Many prisons and jails would be relieved of the average $25,000 a year incarceration of those arrested and convicted. Family life would be enhanced by bringing prisoners back to their families. Costs to the user would be greatly reduced.

As a nation we should have enough voters to realize the truth in what I have just written. Sad, but as 42,000 people are killed yearly in vehicular accidents, no one would consider the banning of vehicles. No one in their right mind would try prohibition again. While some progress has been made in slowing the use of tobacco,: and that's a maybe, it depends on how many people surveyed, lie.And people lie a lot. Look at D.C. Springfield Chicago, etc.; cheating and lying goes on everywhere, including widespread cheating in our educational systems.

Learning from the mistakes made by states that already have legalized marijuana sales, should be very helpful for states considering legalization.

Blow all the hot air at me you like if you don't agree with most of what I have written. As has been written and said millions of times, "don't let the facts confuse one's thinking and stop one from doing the right thing".

If you read my blogs, you may be aware of my call for a national debate on the subject several years ago. All laws should be basically uniform but our elected officials don't always agree to do what another state is doing. Legalization of most things should be uniform so innocents are not arrested just because they travel outside their state. Or city or county, for that matter.

T