4/20
Hitler’s birthday. The Columbine shooting. Religious freedom for the Jews of New Amsterdam. Shittons of marijuana.
What do these things have in common? They happen(ed) on April 20th. 420. Today.
Oberlin College has been said to be one of the leading pot schools in the country, although to tell the truth I don’t notice much of a difference from my high school. That may be because both are full of young adults *cough, cough* who have more money than they know what to do with. The logical choice? Use it to get really, really high.
While I take a certain amusement from knowing that at least one co-op here has created two versions of its mid-day meal (one with pot, one without), I admit to puzzlement on several levels. Why does cannabis deserve its own holiday? Why don’t our Safety and Security officers just cite everyone? And why hasn’t the US government legalized recreational marijuana use?
Seriously, contemplate this for a minute. What purpose does criminalizing marijuana use serve? Does it bring down the use of marijuana? I think emphatically not. Hell, it encourages people to start a HOLIDAY for the stuff. Even BEER doesn’t have a nationally-recognized (if unofficial) holiday. Unless it does, in which case, shhhhh, I’m trying to prove a point here.
On a purely subjective level, given the choice of being around stoned people or drunk people, I choose the stoned people. They rarely get violent, at least unless you’re taunting them with some sort of snack product. Remind me again why alcohol is legal when pot isn’t? Yeah, I didn’t think there was a reason. Wouldn’t it make more sense to legalize marijuana so we could set controls on it? It would reduce the number of deaths and hospital visits from marijuana that’s been cut with something, and the government could tax the hell out of it, especially since prices would come down if it was being grown in huge fields within the US.
So, in summary: by legalizing marijuana, we free up police time to deal with more important things like violent crime, we reduce the urge to smoke by removing the “rebellion” reason for doing so, we reduce the number of deaths and injuries from chemically-enhanced and -altered pot, thus reducing the strain on the medical system, and the government suddenly isn’t nearly as far in debt as it thought it was.
Why not?
jwisser @ April 20, 2008