Poll: Legalize Pot ?

[JimmyHAD]

Full disclosure, I smoked marijuana for twenty years. In 1983 I quit all mind and mood altering substances learning to prefer the natural high. If it was legalized tomorrow I wouldn't smoke it but I think it should be legalized, regulated and sold commercially in the same way that alcohol is.

The tax money taken in from the sales as well as the money saved on enforcement, prosecution, and incarceration would be enough to finance health care and who knows what else.

We wouldn't be locking people up with hardened criminals and risking they're coming out of prison having become criminals themselves. When I was a kid we copped pot from friends sometimes but also from guys who not only sold pot but harder drugs as well. The law enforcement resources would be freed up to tackle other more pressing matters.

Legalization would put a big dent in the income and power of the cocaine cowboy drug dealers here and abroad. Young people wouldn't be exposed to the guys selling the harder stuff when they went looking for weed. I see it as a total positive. In the 1960s I knew it would be made legal. I think it is bizarre that it is still a federal crime when alcohol abuse is way more hazardous to those who use it and the people that are affected by that use.