[420 Girl]

Could cannabis pull California out of the deepening economic recession? One lawmaker thinks it can.

California assemblyman Tom Ammiano recently introduced legislation that would legalize pot and allow the state to tack on a hefty sale tax – like the taxes on tobacco and alcohol. Similar legislation is being debated in Oregon.

Marijuana is California's biggest cash crop (an estimated $14 billion a year in sales).

This could be the first step toward general legalization – for both medical and recreational use. Ammiano’s suggested legislation is just the most recent headline in an ongoing wave of pro-marijuana legalization news.

In February, new U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder suggested that individual states should be able to make their own rules on medical marijuana. Holder also promised to end federal raids on medical marijuana dispensaries, or "compassion clubs."

President Obama's nomination of Gil Kerlikowske as the "drug czar" of the Office of National Drug Control Policy hints at a softer federal line on marijuana, too.

Kerlikowske has experience with cannabis from his time as the police chief of Seattle, where he made it clear to his police force that arresting/prosecuting adults for possession of marijuana must be their lowest priority – in accordance with a 2003 initiative.

(During “Hempfest,” Seattle’s annual marijuana decriminalization festival, local police officers do not arrest for blatant public pot smoking. In 2008, there were an estimated 310,000 attendees.)

Finally, a recent survey by the Public Library of Science Medicine (a journal of the Public Library of Science) found that around 42 percent of people surveyed in the U.S. had tried marijuana at least once in their lives. Is the number of voting pot smokers about to reach a tipping point?

Now, Holder and Kerlikowske are not “marijuana legalizers,” nor is President Obama. But they are weakening the federal chains, and people like Ammiano will eventually be successful at breaking them.

Under their combined actions, the U.S. may see legal pot sooner, rather than later.

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