Marijuana: A better Way To Deal With It.

Being a personal rights advocate for most of my adult life I have to comment on this issue.  California wants to tax marijuana which is sparking debate as usual.  There was talk years ago of requiring a license, a $400.00 license, to sell pot, but who was going to apply for a license when possession of marijuana was a crime?  Taxes are another way to make money off the plant. The State of California is talking about trying that tactic, but no one wants to legalize it except a former governor of New Mexico.  

With the fact that Marijuana grows just about anywhere, indoors, outdoors among other crops, hydroponically,  in greenhouses and in containers on a porch, it is really hard to control.  In fact the FBI statistics confess that eighty percent of crime is drug related.  That means that they created a crime category that they could cash in on.  A small percentage of that is marijuana and the rest is harmful drugs, including prescriptions pills misused or abused.

Now we freely admit that the dealing of hard drugs and misused prescription pills causes a lot of misery. Our beloved Heath Ledger is a case in point and Michael Jackson may be a victim of drug interactions, too.  The jury is out on that death so far.  Education has got to be more practical than just drug busts.  And have you noticed the exorbitant price tags the authorities always lay on the seized drugs?  (Who are they selling to?  The dealers we hear of locally don’t make that kind of bank on drug sales.)

Dealing drugs is where the real crimes come in with the deaths and violence surrounding deals that go bad. Partly because of the illegal nature of the really expensive products, and partly because of the fact that people who deal often use, makes them unstable on top of nervous. A bad combination.  Violence erupts when dealing cocaine and other hard drugs.

Again that’s for the harder drugs like cocaine, amphetamines, heroin, pills and designer drugs. Marijuana is a mellow crowd of people who sell to other users, often friends of long standing,  to stay mellow.  They aren’t shooting up pot like amphetamines.  They aren’t moving huge quantities that command huge piles of money.  A few cartels maybe but they are moving other drugs too. Even the CIA is using pot as coin of the realm to move guns as in the Nicaraguan scandal when Clinton was governor of Alabama.

Your usual sales person grew a few plants and is selling some because jobs don’t pay decent money if they can get around it. Target, for example, tries hard to under-employ workers so they never have to pay overtime.  Other employers use part-time employees on purpose to save on workman’s pensions and other full-time benefits, but that makes it hard to live. (We won’t even go into the employees with no green card.  Guess who cleans these places?  They don’t get busted for the illegal workers and everyone who works for such enterprises knows the score.)

Another thing, respectable people use “weed” in the privacy of their home. A judge here in Albuquerque was busted for possession of cocaine and basically got away with merely resigning.  If it had been pot, it might not have even made the news. This is because the public knows that pot isn’t a drug to be feared like cocaine is. That doesn’t mean people can’t abuse it and be a menace; however anything can be abused unsafely.  Water can be abused and killed a student in a college hazing that was supposed to be safe. (The student’s electrolytes were too diluted and his heart stopped in the midst of a water-drinking contest.)

Regarding marijuana and respectable people using it responsibly, even  President Obama admitted he inhaled, unlike Clinton who weaseled on the question. And this man was elected to the highest office in the land, no pun intended.

Another argument for decriminalizing marijuana is that it is here and not going anywhere.  People who use it are not shooting up the neighborhood. The punks who fight in the parks aren’t doing it on weed.  They are socializing with other kids who might be committing violent crime otherwise.  There is a lot of anger in our young people. Pot calms them and helps them cope. It is a safer drug that the pills they get at will on the streets and are unpredictable. Raves are places where all manner of really bad drugs proliferate and they happen all over.  A better use of police is to ferret out these sites than dog pot dealers.

Do like Oregon did nationwide and make it a ticketing offense at worst case. Now it is a better cash cow that doesn’t ruin lives and reputations. Alaska, we think is the state, lets people grow a few plants for personal use.  This would keep the threat of dosed plants down and stop a lot of the selling problems if people can legally produce their own at home. It might be a sensible  way to go for those who insist on having a joint. Old lungs like mine can’t smoke anything and that’s my personal recommendation; however, there are lots of people who could use it instead of cigarets or harmful prescription drugs for stress and depression.  Cancer doctors recommend it and glaucoma patients can use it successfully. What a shame that people might just enjoy something that pharmaceutical companies can’t made a dime on.  

And one source of the marijuana loose on the streets comes from the evidence locker.  Years ago we knew someone who bought their pot from a man who got his supply from a cop or so he said. Why should he lie?  The hypocrisy there is monumental.
Further, one party goer we talked to told us he was popped with enough pot to put him away for years but the judge was only told about a small “baggie,” as a “stah” is often called. He, being rather stupid, ratted the arresting officers out and they eventually dropped the charges rather than explain where the pot went.

The point here is that marijuana isn’t treated like a dangerous drug because it isn’t in and of itself.  It is too plentiful to be corralled or eradicated.  It is too easy to obtain from a plethora of sources to be stopped.  This brings us to a legal issue for those of you who care about such an angle.  The authorities might want to legalize it so they can tax this Cash Cow rather than going with the system as is: everyone who wants pot can get it rather safely and without paying Uncle Sam more of their hard-earned money. The IRS really is organized crime.

Here is the pay off for the NORML crowd: Under Marbury Vs Madison, at the later portion of a large legal argument dating back to the early Constitution, which has NEVER been over turned, it reads that a law that cannot be enforced is not a law and can be ignored as never having the force of law.  Read it for yourselves, dear legal beagles, and attack this issue with the force of law which America is supposed to be about.

Then maybe we can get on with important issues like pollution that is killing the planet and plastic containers around everything that is giving the population dioxin poising and causing cancer. High Fructose Corn Syrup in our food and approved by the FDA for the money needs to be investigated.  Hang trade agreements with the Japanese for this dangerous garbage.   We could go on for days about more pressing issues but, seriously, you must have the picture by now. * * *