Marijuana Voters
I need this letter to go to every newspaper in the country and if each of you forwards it to just YOUR local paper we’ll have it covered. Can you help a sister out???? Light and Love.
To The Editor (Or Whoever is Honest Enough to Uphold My Right to Free Speech):
WE THE PEOPLE. I encourage you to remember these words when you go to the polls this November and select your candidate. I’m selecting mine based on their willingness to support an issue that can bring BILLIONS of dollars into our economy. An issue that can open more space in our overcrowded jails for murders, rapists, child molesters, and thieves. An issue that can allow people to relax without the side effect of beating a wife or child. An issue that will allow us to have an option to deadly pharmaceuticals for pain, depression, eating disorders, and side effects to cancer treatments.
The “issue”? Cannabis legalization. Yeah. I can hear some of your minds snapping shut right now. Unfortunately, that is the sound of failure, poverty, ignorance and the violation of basic constitutional rights. NO ONE should, in this day and age, be of the “Reefer Madness” mindset any longer. For starters, the people portrayed in that government sponsored propaganda were definitely NOT on pot. Crack, maybe. Or Adderall. Or booze. But without a doubt, not pot. NO ONE, I repeat NO ONE gets that “wired” on pot. Don’t believe me? Open up your teenager’s bedroom door. Look at them. OK? And you thought they just had a tough test at school today.(OK, let me set THIS straight right from the get-go…THAT is one of the reasons I do NOT advocate the use of marijuana by children. They’re already lazy little food machines. They don’t need any help in that arena. Tobacco and liquor companies feel that your child is ready to handle THEIR drugs by age 21. Good enough for me.) And remember, drug dealers don’t check ID.
But let’s talk about what you’re REALLY interested in…the MONEY$$$! 80 MILLION people admit to having smoked pot. Those are just the ones being honest. You KNOW there’s more. Do the math. Tax and regulate marijuana just like tobacco and liquor. The income from this alone would provide everyone, yes, everyone with health care. But lets’ not forget the many other reasons that only a foolish government would ignore:
SAVE – $7.6 billion spent prosecuting and punishing just smokers. (These are NOT the dealers, cartels, or kingpins folks. Just the ones who SMOKE.)
SAVE – Hundreds of Billions of tax dollars have already gone uncollected and been wasted for decades. (I’m talking about the 80 million plus mentioned above – duh.)
SAVE – YOUR tax dollars funded the no-doubt-about-it lost “war” on drugs. You spent 1.5 billion in 1981 increasing to a whopping 18 billion in 2002! (Which, I might add, was the last year the budget was consistently reported.) U.S. government data shows that marijuana prohibition has “clearly failed to achieve its stated objection.” If you look at the “drug war” from a purely economic point of view, the role of the government is to protect the drug cartels.
SAVE -As of May, 2009, Marijuana remains the fourth largest cash crop in America despite law enforcement spending billions annually to outlaw the plant. It is larger than all other cash crops combined.
SAVE – Approximately 50,000 people die each year from alcohol poisoning. Similarly, more than 400,000 deaths each year are attributed to tobacco smoking. By comparison, marijuana is nontoxic and cannot cause death by overdose. (OK, this was a save lives, not money I tossed in. So sue me.)
SAVE – Enforcing marijuana prohibition results in the arrest of more than 872,000 individuals per year…far more than the total number arrested for all violent crimes combined including murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault. How much do you think THAT cost you?
SAVE – The CATO Institute think tank in Washington, DC published a report in September that stated “Treating marijuana as a legally regulated commodity would yield some $17.4 billion dollars annually in cost savings and new tax revenue.”
AND, there’s more folks. Investigators at the university of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health reported that the administration of cannabinoids halts the spread of a wide range of cancers, including brain, prostate, breast, lung, skin, pancreatic and lymphoma. Researchers suggested that cannabinoids may offer significant advantages over standard chemotherapy treatments because the compounds are both non-toxic and can uniquely target malignant cells while ignoring healthy ones!
AND…for those of you who still believe that “Reefer Madness” was a documentary: “So far as premeditated crime is concerned, particularly that of a violent nature, the role of cannabis in our experience is quite distinctive. In some cases these drugs not only do not lead to it, but actually act as deterrents. We have already observed that one of the important actions of these drugs is to quiet the individual so that there is no tendency to violence, as is not infrequently found in cases of alcoholic intoxication.” -United Nations Bulletin on Narcotics, 1957
The body politic, aided by the mainstream media, show blatant disregard for democracy, science and common-sense. I encourage you to do your own research. Don’t just take my word for it. Just a few “unlikely notables” who have spoken AGAINST marijuana prohibition: William F. Buckley, Pat Buchanan, Montel Williams, Art Linkletter, Milton Friedman, Glenn Beck, Willie Nelson, Barbara Streisand, Danny Glover, Dr. Jocelyn Elders. Want more proof? EDUCATE yourself. Here’s just a small sampling of websites you can go to for more truth:
L.E.A.P. (Law Enforcement Against Prohibition)
NORML (National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Law)
S.S.D.P (Students for Sensible Drug Policy)
Drug Sense
Mom’s For Marijuana (Yeah, you read that right)
The Marijuana Tea Party
California NAACP
Self-evidently, cannabis is here to stay. It’s time to reject the drug czar’s tired rhetoric, and abandon the failed federal policy of criminal marijuana prohibition. Let’s stop ceding control of this market to unregulated, untaxed criminal enterprises and put it in the hands of licensed businesses. Let’s stop sanctioning adults for private behavior that is engaged in absent of harm to others. The biggest opponents are the tobacco, alcohol and pharmaceutical industries. (Go figure…3 drug manufactures) Are you voting for people who can be bought with these lobbyists’ money?
WE THE PEOPLE have spoken. I want a candidate that is actually listening.
Jo Anne Ludwig Stinger
Waukesha, Wi.
