Reprint - "Legalize It"

Way back in the early days of social entertainment, I had a MySpace page that I kept mostly to blog.  I resisted FaceBook for the longest time because you couldn't blog on it.  Recent posts from Ideal Readers on FaceBook have prompted me to repost one of my old blogs.  This was originally written August 8, 2007:

Legalize It  

     First of all, let me start by saying that I do not and never have smoked marijuana, nor do I plan to do so. I have gotten into fights and broken off friendships because of marijuana. I believe that since it is illegal, people should not use it (never mind the illegality of other practices that I do engage in, which I will not list here). I also do not smoke cigarettes. My drug of choice is alcohol, and if we all remember our Capone, that substance was illegal at one time.

     Marijuana should be legalized for this reason: so it can replace cigarettes in the economy. Cigarettes are going out of style. You can't smoke indoors hardly anywhere in America anymore, not even in a bar. A bar! That's just stupid. It's a fucking BAR! You are drinking a potentially addictive substance which will make you sick if overingested, and you are doing so in the hopes that you will be able to have unsafe sex, the dirtier the better, with someone that you just met. In review: we are permitted to attack our livers with an impairing liquid which will make us unsafe to drive, extremely uninhibited and forgetful; we are permitted to attempt to have unprotected sex with strangers who are either slutty or also under the influence; we are not permitted to smoke. Smoking is dangerous! You could get cancer! You could make my eyes water! You could give me cancer!

     To people who complain when someone around them smokes - SHUT THE HELL UP! There is only one viable complaint about smoking. It stinks. It permeates every fabric and Febreeze doesn't cut it. Smoking is dangerous? Tell me that the next time you go 85 MPH on the freeway. You could get cancer? You'll get cancer anyway. Everything causes cancer. The only real question is whether or not you die of some other cause before cancer gets you.

     Anyway - alcohol is still ok - It is a substance which: relaxes the body; impairs behavior; relaxes inhibitions; makes people say silly things; can be concentrated for a stronger effect.  Does any of this sound familiar? Cigarettes are becoming outmoded, so Big Tobacco is going to take a huge whack in sales and the economy will drop. What to do?

    

     Legalize marijuana. Sell it like cigarettes, treat it like alcohol. Make the same laws which apply to alcohol apply to marijuana. No blunts for folks under 21. No operating a motor vehicle under the influence of a fattie. Also - tax the hell out of it! Trust me, people will buy it.

     

     Don't give me any shit about the deleterious effects of marijuana, either. I don't buy it. Don't quote me the results of some study. They are propagandist bullshit designed to keep us in line, and even if it concerns a substance that I never used and never will - fuck the system! Even the devil can quote the bible. Remember - the best way to get someone to do something is to tell them that they can not or should not.