[420 Girl]

The Forest Service made fools of themselves recently by releasing “clues” to identify hidden marijuana growing operations, alerting the people they were hunting as to what to avoid leaving behind, increasing Bruce Springsteen sales, AND getting nailed for racial profiling—you can't make this stuff up, you know? I think it's time for Michael Moore to do a film about America's silly and hypocritical relationship with marijuana.

I object to the destruction of fields of marijuana in this country. We could be growing the solutions to the “drug war” AND the deficit in this country if we'd just decriminalize pot and start making lemonade out of a lemon of a national policy.

Our stupid drug laws are keeping cartels in business, while forcing one of our largest agricultural crops into the underground economy. This is both wasteful and delusional. What drug were they on when they came up with this abomination of a policy? THAT'S the drug we should ban!

Legalizing and decriminalizing are two different things. When you legalize, you use laws to support something. When you decriminalize something, you ignore it to death. Legalize is active—decriminalize is passive.

Decriminalizing is deciding not to punish for something that used to seem punishable. Like when your teacher stopped punishing you for being left-handed. Like when we stopped punishing people for marrying out of their race. Like decriminalizing medical marijuana use. You just start leaving things alone.

I'm only mentioning that distinction for people who kind-of agree with me, but just can't bring themselves to actually make marijuana use legal—too active. Fine. Decriminalize marijuana.

Wouldn't it be nice to eliminate marijuana's foreign markets? Let's be honest—an entire underground economy is funding those activities, and ignorance and hypocrisy are keeping us from cleaning up our mess. Smoking pot isn't immoral—it's just illegal. Lying about the business of growing marijuana is immoral.

I'm a person very interested in sustainability issues—I worry about clean water and nutritious food—I worry that we have advanced technologically past the point of reason, and that we are poisoning ourselves and our planet with bad policies, greed and stupidity. There are bazillions of similarly concerned people all over the world and I hear from a lot of them. Recently, I heard from some folks who are developing plans to establish a network of organic farms that will include small crops of marijuana. No kidding!

If ever there were a product waiting to burst onto the free market, it's marijuana. All the work that the FDA should have been doing on marijuana all these years has been done by growers and scientists off the grid. The product is “shovel ready” for marketing and distribution. Nothing is to be gained by NOT getting into the marijuana business—the status quo doesn't work.

Now I read about all the medical marijuana stores blossoming locally — nothing could surprise me more than this particular bloom in our area. I did not see that coming at all. I guess I'm OK with the whole medical marijuana thing—it's better than nothing—but it too is deeply hypocritical, not unlike “Don't ask, Don't tell.”

I'm sure marijuana has valid medical applications—it could be a lot more valuable than we know, but we've been too skittish to study it longitudinally. I don't happen to have a medical need for marijuana, but I sure wouldn't mind being able to buy a smoke now and then. Wouldn't it be funny if we found out that marijuana lowers blood pressure? Hmmm.

I'm not sure I “get” the fear of marijuana. If it were decriminalized, it would be removed from the market for more toxic substances, like m*eth. I think it would be better for us to decriminalize ALL controlled substance use so we can bring the users into the light and give them a chance at functionality—I'd like to neuter the cartels and the Taliban economically.

I don't expect to live long enough to see that happen, but I would like to see marijuana put some tax dollars into the coffers, both State and Federal. It IS California's biggest crop—why shouldn't California be getting some of that money?



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