Marijuana Policy Project

Any reading of the court news will impress the reader with how many there are and how much court time is spent on defendants, mostly youth, for possessing small amounts of marijuana. At risk of precipitating public outrage, we ask the question that begs to be asked. Isn't it time to consider legalizing marijuana and clearing our court dockets of this way over-inflated bogeyman?

All of the arguments of the anti-marijuana hysterics that using pot leads to the use of barbiturates, or cocaine, or heroin, all of which lead to addiction and death are true of the old arguments about youth drinking beer: beer leads to booze leads to alcoholism leads to ruined lives and ends in death. Both claims seek to establish a causal relationship between using pot or drinking beer and addiction and death. The trouble is, neither of them is a cause of these much deeper problems, as any counselor will tell you. They are initial events in the minds and lives of addictive psychologies.

Alcohol is legal, and so is tobacco, another addictive substance. Yet, we make a pile of money taxing the heck out of their sale and use, and there is no indication in sight anywhere that either will be outright banned because of its intrinsic evil. We tried that once with the Volstead Act and prohibition. It didn't work, except to bankroll the underworld for the next 50 years, just as the illegal cultivation and sale of pot is a growth industry for today's underworld.

Isn't it just a bit hypocritical to harvest the wages of sin from two addictives, yet piously condemn the third (whose addictive nature is, by the way, questionable)? We think it's time for a serious debate on the legalization of marijuana.