What Does President-elect Obama Need To Know About Marijuana ?
This is the last week for submissions to NORML’S VIDEO AD CONTEST. There is $10,000 in cash prize money waiting for the America’s best answers to the above question.
By George Rohrbacher, NORML Board of Directors, medical marijuana patient
America has witnessed the unfolding of a series of unprecedented historic events that portend great change for war on cannabis. The federal war against the plant entered into its 71st year this fall, from the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937, to Nixon’s invention of the ‘war on weed’, to Bush’s expanded war against cannabis and the sick and dying that has being playing out in the dispensaries and patient coops of our country’s medical marijuana states—for generations, our federal government has used every means short of public hangings to deter Americans from using cannabis, and it hasn’t worked.
This war on the cannabis plant and its consumers has been a complete and utter failure.
Over 100 million Americans have used cannabis in their lifetimes, including our new President-elect, and about 20 million Americans used pot just this last week. The perverse nature of ‘pot prohibition’ is that it guarantees that marijuana is easily available to our children, the very group of citizens we say we are trying hardest to protect.
In early October 2008, America made its 20-millionth marijuana arrest, topping a record 872,000 arrests in 2007, 90% of which were for the possession of a small amount of pot. Vast sums of taxpayer’s money continue to be wasted every day in America’s failed cannabis prohibition efforts. A simple, but revolutionary change to a tax and regulate posture on cannabis a from to our current “war on weed” policy could have a combined net positive effect on our increasingly strapped federal and state budgets by as much as $50 billion annually to the good. And, to top this off, America’s cannabis users want to be taxed!!! We want to be treated normal. We are pleading for it! (more…)
Posted on: January 10, 2009
Filed under: Marijuana News
Comments (1)
Sykobear
January 11th, 2009 at 12:28 am
The decriminalization of marijuana for personal use by adults is important. I believe crimes against personal growers would end because anybody has the capability of growing. People would not have to buy it, or steal for it, they can grow their own. It is a weed after all.
I have recently lost state issued medical coverage, being disabled and in need of some sort of pain relief, I couldn’t think of a better solution. I will now have to pay for prescriptions, most of them are not on the $4.00 list. People are paying outrageous prices for pot. You can have a crop of your own in 3 short months for less than $10.00 a month in electric usage. The money people would save could pay for a new car. No need for “auto bailout”!!
There, I just saved the country billions of dollars.
Decriminalize
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