[420 Girl]

I smell it every time I walk past my downstairs neighbor's door. A divine smoky must that fills the entryway.The engineer tries to cover it up with some fruity cleaner. But it's there.

Weed.

Look. This is the "city of progress." This is a town that not only gave us delicious and inexpensive chewing gum, but also gave us Tina Fey.

I'm no authority on marijuana. I've only smoked it--lightly--a few times. But I can tell you this: it's nice. And I have tons of friends who regularly smoke and lead productive, healthy lives.

Should I have been alive during the Great Depression, when booze was illegal because of Prohibition, I wouldn't have been breathing for long. I'd have either hung myself from lack of social drinking, starved to death (for obvious reasons), or joined the mob and hung out in speakeasies in the Loop.

Now, during this Great Recession, we have an overworked, overstressed workforce. And we have unemployed hippies who just want to toke up in peace--and pay good money for it. Either way, legalizing marijuana would help both these people out: the stressed could relax (studies have shown that weed has the positive mental effects of a short vacation without the baggage claims and screaming babies) and the hippies could party without paranoia (depending on the bud).

California stands on the edge of legalization with a ballot initiative this fall. With our state so in debt, with the front-page headliners at the Sun-Times and Tribune getting off everyday to horrible pictures of Pat Quinn and warnings of epic disaster, now is the best time to consider this move as well. It's commonsense thought that a well-regulated, fairly-taxed market for marijuana would be a boon for Illinois's--and most-definitely Chicago's--economy.

Then maybe, just maybe, my neighbors downstairs would feel free to share some of their chronic with me. I'll bring the ice cream, Doritos, and Snoop Dogg CDs.


http://www.420magazine.com/forums/in...-get-high.html