Going Green
State Senator Karen Tallian and I don’t agree on a lot, but I think she is definitely right when it comes to legalizing marijuana for medical purposes.
According to the Associated Press, she plans to introduce a bill this session that would allow for pot to be used for medical purposes now that the Justice Department is prohibited from using your tax dollars to put cancer, AIDS and glaucoma patients and their suppliers in prison if they are following their state’s laws on medicinal marijuana usage. I think that if marijuana can be used in a responsible way to help ease another person’s pain and suffering, why not?
To be honest, I’ve never understood why marijuana is illegal anyway? And for the record, I tried marijuana once in my 20s, it did nothing for me but dull my cynicism and overall hatred of humanity so I gave it up.
And apparently I’m not alone, according to some quick research I did about 70 million other Americans have also tried marijuana and prior to legalization efforts in a few states, about 17 million of us are using it on a daily basis.
Here are some other fun facts about pot…
- It’s believed the original drafts of our founding documents were written on hemp.
- We spend between $7.5 billion-$10 billion annually to arrest, arraign and prosecute folks for pot possession.
- In the first six months of this year, Colorado collected nearly $45 million in tax revenue from legalized pot sales.
- When it comes to the “addictive” affects of marijuana, the National Institute on Drug Abuse says about 9% of the people who use pot will become addicted over the long term, that number is nearly double for alcohol usage.
- Even the American Public Health Association acknowledges that if marijuana is decriminalized; we should adjust our public health rules accordingly, which I have no problem with.
But Abdul isn’t marijuana bad for you? So can watching any reality TV show with a Khardashian, but that’s not illegal, albeit maybe it should be. Go green!!!
