Legalize It

My friend Kase really liked my last blog about bonobos. It was largely about sex. Bonobos like sex – lots of sex. It seems like that blog belongs at the beginning of a three part series. This, the second part, is about drugs. You can guess what the next one will be about.

My recreational drug of choice is marijuana. I don't do it that often and never within 24 hours of working, which is more than I can say for my alcohol drinking friends.  Sadly, our “free” country has preselected alcohol as the State sanctioned drug. Ever since it was made illegal, “our” government has been discrediting marijuana as a dangerous narcotic. Meanwhile, back in alcohol-land, thousands of people die every year from alcohol related problems. Can you drink yourself to death? Yes. Can you smoke enough pot to kill yourself? No. Hmmm…very confusing.

Finally, after years of study and testing, the medicinal value of marijuana has become so conclusive that 35 states have medical use laws on the books. In my life, I have met people rich and poor, young and old who use marijuana on a regular basis. Lawyers, police officers, doctors, athletes, stock brokers, business consultants, engineers, computer programmers – apparently, there are no socioeconomic class distinctions among pot smokers.

Here we are with budget problems and there’s an estimated $35 billion industry going untaxed. I’d guess that the politicians are the only ones not smoking weed, but I know that’s not true – they’re smoking it, too. And, most of them inhale.

Lots of people blog about the stupidity of not legalizing marijuana. They talk about how cowardly our politicians are behaving. We, the people, need to have courage, too. In California, there is a petition with 700,000 signatures on it; enough to put full legalization on the ballot. That’s courage. The days of marijuana prohibition are numbered.

Now, if we could just get bonobos smoking marijuana…