Puff'em if You've Got'em

While at the WMNF Tropical Heatwave Saturday, we bumped into a couple of representatives from PUFMM, People United for Medical Marijuana. The PUFMM guys were collecting signatures on a petition to get the medical marijuana issue on the election ballot in 2012.

According to PUFMM, "There are over 1.7 million seriously ill people in Florida. They have the right to safe, affordable, and effective medication. The goal of this committee is to get medical marijuana legal in the state of Florida. We are working to get our legislators to change the laws. One way to do this is the ballot initiative process.

We are collecting signatures on a petition that supports a constitutional amendment giving patients the right to grow, obtain, purchase and possess medical marijuana under a doctor's supervision. We need valid signatures from 676,811 registered voters and millions of dollars in donations. The deadline for the 2012 election ballot is February 1, 2012."

We signed the petition. This is a noble goal, but in my opinion it is only a first step. Marijuana should be legalized across the board for a number of reasons. Alcohol prohibition didn't work and neither is marijuana prohibition. All this law is doing is making the marijuana "bootleggers" filthy rich. It is tossing Americans in prison for lengthy terms for a victim-less crime. It is perpetuating bloody drug wars on our borders and in our cities. It is costing our country trillions of dollars...and,

It isn't working!

Did you know that marijuana is a 35 billion dollar - that's $35,000,000,000 - cash crop in this country? And, that money is tax free to the farmers. Yes, it is illegal, but that is one hell of a dollar incentive. Care to take a stab at who the majority of buyers are? It is us. We are the major buyers of a product that our government is taxing the crap out of us to eliminate. Are we INSANE?

Albert Einstein defined insanity as "doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results." This country seems to define itself by this definition. Take the Cuban embargo, the Bush wars, and the war on drugs as examples. But right now I will stay focused on the insane drug policies.


My solution: Legalize drugs, tax those drugs, stop the bloodshed, and reduce our prison population. Those points in themselves would go a long way toward reducing our national debt. Our focus should be on education and rehabilitation, not war. And, to those who are against legalization I have to ask, "What is in it for you to perpetuate this insanity?"