A Pot Smoker gets honest about why Not to legalized recreational Marijuana

OK. This won't be a long one. I believe whole-heartedly in the therapeutic value of cannabis. This is not about medical marijuana which should be legal (and is in many states) and is simply waiting for an archaic federal government to catch up. I have faith the federal government will catch up when the people that view marijuana correctly as a medicine and not as a counter culture threat against the establishment (a sentiment that should vacate with the baby boomers) run the country. That may be soon. Obviously, to deny any drug to people who need it (much less force them to substitute other synthetic drugs that are not as effective, have harsher side effects, and have been around for a thousandth of the time of marijuana) is criminal. To do so simply because you haven't figured out how to patent, monopolize and profit from it is simply evil (as in "the root of all..."). The is no question about its efficacy to anyone that has tried it for nausea. It's simply works better than anything else (as someone who suffered with irritable bowl for years, I've tried them all). It should be regulated and controlled like any other medicine. Period.

This is about the legalization of recreational marijuana, and the idea that it is no more harmful than alcohol or tobacco and therefore should be treated the same. To that I say, you're right. In a perfect world, starting from scratch, anyone who has tried marijuana (some 30 million or more Americans) knows it is no more dangerous than alcohol and all the numbers about addiction, deaths from overdosing, auto accidents, liver damage, uncontrolled behavior all favor marijuana as the safer intoxicant. No argument there. Most of the studies I've read state tobacco (especially as manipulated by cigarette companies) to be much more dangerous in terms of cancer, emphysema and lung disease. No argument there. All things being equal, it is the better choice.

However, all things are not equal. Some time ago, during tough financial times for Americans, marijuana was made illegal in order to try and help out-of-work Americans by arresting and deporting foreign workers (mostly Mexicans) under new drug laws, thus freeing up jobs which only a few years before Americans didn't want but now needed. With the help of propaganda from William Randolf Hurst (think Reefer Madness), marijuana was ridiculously demonized. Some years later, Nixon sees drugs as the easily arrestable commonality among the forces that opposed him and began the DEA and the drug war as we know it. Of course, if we are to believe the supreme court that the constitution provides the right to privacy, then any such law regulating what you can ingest in your own body would be obviously unconstitutional. Still, these travesties happened spurred by men who were never far from their scotch. Unfortunately, marijuana doesn't produce either the motivation, aggressiveness or the narcissism to want to go into politics so the choice was, in the end, inevitable.

It is, unfortunately, what has happened in the years since that has made recreational marijuana almost impossible to make appropriately legal. It is the tremendous industries that grew up around this illegal substance that make it irresponsible of us to think of destroying all the jobs and money created by illegal marijuana in these difficult financial times.

I have heard the argument that cannabis would be taxed and make a ton of money for the states, and while that argument has some merit as the taxes would be a substantial revenue stream, in the end we would cripple our economy and lose thousands upon thousands of jobs.

Stats from the US Dept. of Justice (http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/dcf/enforce.htm) reports that in 2006, 13.1% of all arrests in the US were drug offences. Of those, 43.9% were marijuana related and 39% or 738,916 arrests were for marijuana possession alone.

Think about how many people's jobs are reliant those 3 quarters of a million arrests. There's the cops that arrest them, and the ones that process them, write them up and do all that paper work. When they go to court there is the judges, drug lawyers, prosecutors, stenographers, bailiffs, janitors, etc... Then there are the probation officers, the people who hold the mandatory NA classes and everyone else involved in post arrest. In fact, the money we pay for all these fines, court fees and lawyers is like our marijuana tax. Remove marijuana arrests and you remove the workload and revenue from 6% of our entire legal system. How many jobs would that cost?

And don't get me started on the jail system, one of the only growing private industries left in our current recession. How many wardens, guards, laundry workers, bulk food preparers, cot manufacturers and all the other industries employed by the prison system would lose their job if they, like any industry, essentially lost 6% of their business. How many jobs do the construction of new prisons create? To combat jail overcrowding in Santa Barbara, CA (where I currently live), construction of a small new 300 bed jail for $76 million has been proposed. Between 1990 and 2000 in the US we built over 245 new prisons. 25 per year! If all those juicy contracts were to dry up because we actually reduced the number of inmates, how many jobs would that cost?

You would also lose 90% of the drug testing industry, a 5.9 billion dollar a year industry with thousands of jobs.

As far as the money that would be made by legalizing cannabis, well that already exists though it may travel through a black market for a limited time. Our court fees make up for a good portion of what marijuana taxes could generate. With the ease of production (it is a weed after all), most of the marijuana smoked in America was grown in America. Gone are the days of importing the bulk from Mexico or Thailand. Most Mexican weed never gets past San Diego or Texas and Thailand is now importing their weed from Cambodia. The number one cash crop in California last year was Marijuana (grapes came in second, btw). That means that the "your funding terrorists by buying pot" is a ruse (though heroin, mostly from Afghanistan poppies is a different story). It also means that the vast majority of the money spent on pot in this country stays in this country paying rent, bills, buying food, medicine, cars, etc... and paying sales tax on each purchase. The money is in the system, whether it leaks out into the black market for a while or not.

So legalization would only produce some additional tax revenue, and would cost thousands of jobs in the mean time. These are hard working, good American people. Public defenders, judges, corrections officers, court employees. People who went to school and worked hard for their jobs, have families and lives and shouldn't have their jobs lost or replaced by low paying jobs in a pot coffee shop or cashier in a marijuana dispensary.

Is it morally reprehensible to put your own citizens in jail because they prefer a different, less harmful, more natural high than the one deemed appropriate by heavily lobbied lawmakers? Of course. Is it disheartening to find out the US imprisons a higher percentage of its population than any other country in the world? Unbelievably so. We may not have a police state, but we have the highest prison population and rely on that fact for our economy.

The problem is that while the legal status of alcohol and tobacco shows the obvious hypocrisy, a substance is still needed to drive this drug war since, of people that use illicit drugs, 85% use only marijuana. If marijuana was legal it would be impossible to justify the 19.5 billion dollar budget the DEA sees annually with only 15% of the drug offenders left. The DEA, and everyone else who profits from the drug war, are not going to give up one cent of its ever expanding budget without a fight, and 19.5 billion can buy one hell of a fight. So, marijuana would have to be replaced by something just as prevalent. Alcohol prohibition, when attempted, gave rise to a more violent form of black market then the farmers and stoners that dominate the current pot prohibition. I mean, who would you want to arrest if you were a cop, a stoner or a drunk. Violent drunk is a term well deserved, violent pothead only exists in 1930's movies. So, there you go, what's better from a law enforcement or political perspective than a prohibition that generates millions of dollars, that supports thousands of jobs for the justice system, where the black market money stays within the country, and where the offenders don't fight back. Perfect. Well, if you a drunk anyway.

The real solution is not immediate legalization, but a reclassification of drug offenders in order to keep non-violent drug offenders away from our violent prisons. A restructuring of the drug laws in order to replace the prisons with therapeutic hospitals, the correction officer jobs with drug counselors and work our way slowly toward a better treatment of our marijuana smokers and their contribution to society and its economy. You can only skin a sheep once, but you can shear it many times. The pot smokers i know would pony up the money and go to mandatory treatment 50 times before giving up their relaxation and recreation. Now your talking recurring revenue, creating or replacing jobs with good paying jobs that require more education and at the same time taking away ammunition from the pro-legalization contingent. The US would get to save face for its failed international pot war by not legalizing, and we could still federally legalize medical marijuana without conflict. Good for the economy all the way around, good for the US standing in the world, good for the people that are sick and need it.

Then, eventually, we could work toward the more logical and morally agreeable decriminalization when our economy isn't spearheading downward like a skydiver with an umbrella. When we can, we need to work away from a prison nation to create jobs, and begin switching to new energy, technology and other sources of creating good jobs. Until then, my best advice is to smoke with discretion and take comfort in the realization your habit is contributing to the national well-being.

Just a thought. But then again, I might have been to stoned to think clearly.