The Sacramento Bee today upped the ante in pushing the debate on legalizing pot, running a "debate stirred over legalizing marijuana" article with photos on its Saturday front page. The link is:
http://www.sacbee.com/...
Again the Bee asks readers to join the debate on the Bee's online Forum.
This followed a Bee editorial that ran a couple of days ago also upping Gov. Schwarzenegger on his call for debate about legalization, by saying the Governator's "tax revenue" rationale to consider legalization wasn't nearly as important a reason to debate legalization as the failure of the "War on Drugs" generally. More on the Bee front page article below the fold.
The Sacramento Bee article is entitled "Schwarzenegger stirs debate on legalizing marijuana" and starts out graphically by pointing out that "Barack Obama inhaled" and "Bob Dylan sang about it" ("Everybody must get stoned.") Pro and con views are presented, but the pro views dominate.
"It's time to acknowledge that marijuana prohibition has been a catastrophic failure and we need a new approach," said Aaron Smith of the Marijuana Policy Project's California branch.
The story features a photo of Merrill Cowee at a medical marijuana dispensary. Cowee is a 48-year-old Marysville man who uses medicinal marijuana for lower-back pain. The Bee says he "gives a thumbs-up to legalization."
"Why not?" he said. "I've seen the damage that alcohol does to families – not only a person, but families. To me, I've never seen pot do that."
The Bee points out that President Obama has said he supports decriminalizing pot use, though it's not real decriminalization, because he only goes to far as to advocate "fining minor offenders rather than jailing them." However, legalization advocates "nonetheless are convinced that times are changing, pointing to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder's announcement two months ago that the federal government will stop prosecuting medical cannabis dispensaries."
"The reason that marijuana prohibition has been kind of the elephant in the room that nobody wants to talk about is because of the fear there would be a political backlash," Smith [of the Marijuana Policy Project] said.
"Now, especially with the economic crisis in California, there are much more unpopular proposals being tossed around than making marijuana legal," he said.
The Bee summarizes the reasons to support legalization well: "simply accepting the pot smoking that exists now, undercutting black-market demand, saving money by easing the crunch on prisons, and generating tax revenues for drug education."
As many commenters on the "Legalization" diaries here at Daily Kos have said, the more rational discourse there is on legalization, the closer we get to legalization - because the pro side has the overwhelming force of science and common sense on its side. So let's keep the Sac Bee and hopefully other media debating the issue seriously.