Now imagine...just imagine if we could save over 20 BILLION dollars a year. 20 BILLION. And thats just at the federal level. Add another 30 Billion to that figure if you want to include the state budgets.
Imagine what could be done with that...you could almost double the current education budget. Lets say they put the money into scholarship funds for underprivileged individuals trying to go to college...at a typical state school with in state tuition we could create almost 800,000 new students who will then graduate and move on to bigger and better things than working at Wal-Mart.
Now, You might be wondering...how are we going to save all this money...Its simple and Ill tell you but only if you join me over the break
Aha, glad you made it...Now where were we. Oh yeah, How will we save over $50 Billion a year And the answer is two words
Legalize Cannabis!
Yeah, thats right, I said it. Legalize it, its about freaking time.
I think most rational people can agree that prohibition is generally a bad idea, it leads to a black market that is unregulated and unsafe and allows criminal organizations to take control of it and use it to further their revenue. The classic case of this was alcohol. Recently there was an article that made the Rec list that noted the newest case of the criminal organizations benefiting from the prohibition of a plant. The prohibition has come full circle.
Now why does alcohol deserve to be legal and pot deserves to be a Schedule 1 drug with "with no accepted medical use"? If anyone can answer that question in a logical, factual, rational fashion I will give them a cookie.
"No Accepted Medical Use"
...What? Wasnt cannabis mentioned in the worlds oldest pharmacopeia, the Shen-nung pen-ts'ao ching? Oh, yes it was, it noted that the fruits produced hallucinations, it allows one to communicate with the spirits and lighten ones body. It was also used to treat female disorders, gout, rheumatism, malaria, beri-beri, biols, constipation, loss of apetite, and absent-mindedness. It was also used as an anestetic.
"Well that was like 10,000 years ago(they actually used it for medicine 4,000 years ago, they have found hemp scraps dating back 10,000 years though), we have better drugs now, we should just use the synthetic ones that come in the little tablets. Today marijuana is nothing but an illicit useless drug"
..er...okay. What about the thousands of patients who visted a dispensiary today to deal with everything from sleep disorders, to aids, to cancer, to glaucoma, to chronic pain or whatever else it might help you with. These people use cannabis because its the only thing that really helps, it helps cancer patients deal with the pain, nausea, and loss of apetite associated with chemotherapy. It helps people who can not swallow pills. Do these people not deserve the quality of life the rest of us enjoy?
But thats not even the point, the prohibition of a substance based on political motives is WRONG, just plain wrong. If the government really wants to save us from the "scourge of society" they need to outlaw Soda and McDonald's today...but they wont, because its not about saving us, its about imprisoning us. Controlling what we can and can't do.
"whatever, its still a bad drug"
Its a bad drug? Huh? Considering cannabis has not been shown to have a correlation with cancer, and has actually shown to possibly reverse some of the effects of cancer it is obviously better than cigarettes.
Since cannabis has never killed one person ever from the use of it alone...that would make it better than MOST prescription drugs.
Since cannabis does not increase aggressive tendencies, nor does it impair peoples motor skills nor cloud their judgment(usually)...that would make it better than alcohol.
Cannabis is less toxic than aspirin, less addictive than caffeine...but its illegal and(in 2001) we arrested over 900,000 people and sent over 300,000 people to jail for it...Guess who is paying for all of those inmates. YOU ARE!! Yay! Please Uncle Sam, take my money away so we can arrest 20 year olds who are doing nothing wrong aside from possessing a little plant matter.
I found that it costs between $19,000 and $23,000 a year to house an inmate...that would translate to between $5,700,000,000 and $6,900,000,000 a year saved if we just stopped this bloody drug war. And that is on top of the money that the government doles out for the drug war.
But its still illegal...Why?! WHY? WHY? WHY? WHY? WHY?
Because of the apathy of people like YOU. The person reading this who hasn't contacted their senator about this. The person who didn't email Obama for brushing off the issue that was voted Number 1, 7, 11, 13, 15, and 18(yes, all of those questions were about cannabis) by the people that participated in his worthless "Open for Questions" charade on his Change.gov website. And yes, he responded with one sentence, "Obama does not support the legalization of marijuana" despite the OVERWHELMING support for doing so.
"Overwhelming support? WHAT? Maybe support by dirty hippie potheads like yourself"
Oh really? well according to a poll done in Nov 2004 by the AARP 72% of people nationwide believe cannabis should be legal for medical purposes.
"Well thats just one poll"
There are 13 others that were nationwide polls...all of them with response rates anywhere from 57-80% FOR the legalization of Cannabis. And thats just the national Polls. There are plenty of state polls as well. Around 20-30 that I found on one website.
Now, I know I am not the best with words. I am possibly not the best person to write this diary...however, I am FED UP with being pushed to the back burner and seeing friends of mine arrested and taken to jail for possessing a PLANT. lets not forget that, we are talking about a PLANT, a P-L-A-N-T here. No chemical processing, no preparation. Just the pure dried flowers from a female plant. A plant that is capable of 15 feet of growth in a year, none the less. A plant that could keep us from having to use trees for paper. Or oil for rope. It is used to create some of the finest skin lotions available. Simply, it is a wonder plant. It can be used for just about anything.
If you read this, do something, I dont care what it is, even if its just a little research to see if I am bat-shit crazy or if I am making a decent point.
Just DO SOMETHING. Please? Pretty Please?
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/25/AR2006052501729.html)
http://www.procon.org/...
http://www.dc.state.fl.us/...
http://drugwarfacts.org/...
http://www.nowpublic.com/...
http://www.norml.org/...
Update:
To a few of the commenters...
fblau-
I personally have clearer judgment after I smoke. I take time to think about the consequences of my actions before taking rash action. And I also feel that I have increase motor skills...especially when considering playing a musical instrument such as the guitar, my hands move with much more fluidity than they ever can when I am sober. I also have better balance(I tested one night, before I smoked then after I smoked)
and to
bugscuffle, The education budget for the year 2008 was 57.2 Billion. I included the State money spent on the War on Drugs as well...You're right, its not quite doubling. However we could add about 37 Billion to the budget which is a 65% increase...not bad if you ask me.
And to
kuronekoyama, Alcohol is MUCH worse than cannabis. Its literally rotten fruit juice for Christs sake. and I did mention that. I also mentioned how it is better than caffeine, nicotine, aspirin and most prescription drugs. And I know i should have left alot of what I said off. I just feel very strongly about this issue and when I started writing I kind of ended up on a soapbox, as such the rambling aspect of the diary and the grammar errors(which I fixed the ones I caught on this update)
And my point mentioning medical cannabis is that it has legitimate uses. And the government is straight up lied when it scheduled it as a schedule 1 substance...and they knew it. It was in the U.S. Pharmacopoeia until 1942. And the Shafer Commission that Nixon himself formed suggested that it not be criminalized...but that didn't matter, Cannabis was going to be illegal whether we liked it or not.
My overall point is that something that has as many benefits and as few drawbacks as cannabis should be legal for anyone of consenting age to enjoy in the privacy of their home or amongst other consenting friends.