High Time For A Change

Some ideas make you wonder what the creator was smoking when they came up with it. With this one, we pretty much know:

On Wednesday, the California secretary of state certified a November vote on a ballot measure that would legalize, tax and regulate marijuana, a plan that advocates say could raise $1.4 billion and save precious law enforcement and prison resources.

via Legal-Marijuana Advocates Focus on a New Green — NYTimes.com.

It’s not often an idea comes about that will give the state a new revenue source, make many consumers/voters happier, make many consumers safer, and cut the states costs (through law enforcement and prison spending) all at once.

The only people who really lose from legalizing marijuana, are drug cartels, and parents in fictional small towns in the west — the kind of people who came up with the following argument:

Opponents, however, scoff at the notion that legalizing marijuana could somehow help with the state’s woes. They tick off a list of social ills — including tardiness and absenteeism in the workplace — that such an act would contribute to.

As opposed to alcohol, which has never made anyone late to work, and championship sports, which has never led anyone to skip work.

Regardless of what you personally think of pot, the objective fact is that our current laws don’t prevent anyone from getting it, cost a lot to implement, and put money in the hands of really bad, violent people. Legalization acknowledges the ineffectiveness, cuts the violent criminals out, encourages business growth and employment, and brings a percent of the resulting economic growth into desperately shrinking government coffers.