Marijuana

For the majority of my pre-pubescence i grew up with the idea that Marijuana was a bad, evil, god-forsaken plant and should never be thought nor spoken of let alone inhaled. From Nancy Reagan deciding that "just Say No" was a suitable phrase to keep kids off drugs, and there we see how that worked out.

Shitty, for people who don't know. It worked out shitty. Or shittily.

"Just Say No" has never been a phrase to rely on. It hasn't worked with drugs (as we see drug related crimes escalating), it hasn't worked with abstinence (as the AMA even shows every year that teaching only abstinence doesn't lower the amount of kids having sex, it just lowers the amount of kids having safe sex), and it didn't work with any other possible organization or ideal you can think of that you should probably just say no to.

But I'm not here to talk about those other outlets and/or organizations or even sex today.

I'm here to talk about Marijuana, and why that little bastardized plant should be legalized and brought back to stores in America like it was less than 100 years ago.

Let's start at the beginning:

In the early 1930s lived a man by the name of William Randolph Hearst. This man is the inspiration for Citizen Kane if that helps you connect with this essayic prose. Old WRH was a newspaper magnate, and by that we mean he basically owned media and bought a newspaper to say good things about himself and people he liked and publicly bitch slap the people he hated, mainly politicians and plants. Ah you see, he was also an industrialist in timber. Timber is trees.

Well here comes the pulp of the marijuana plant, more commonly known as hemp. Hemp was cheap, could grow anywhere and in vast quantities, unlike trees which would take years to cultivate and required much more land (roots are funny that way). Hemp was seen as a huge problem to Willie. See back before the internet and phones, paper was used for goddamn everything. Newspapers, letters, goddammit you know what paper was used for. And Willie had a shit ton of it.

So what'd he do? He teamed up with Harry J. Anslinger (which I have to point out is one of the most douche-hole names I've ever encountered), who was the Assistant Prohibition Commissioner in the Bureau of Prohibition. Again, douche-hole had to throw "Prohibition" in there twice). Since Anslinger couldn't help but prohibit relaxing and fun things for Americans (such as liquor) he was easily swayed by Hearst who explained the deadly properties of marijuana and the effect it would have the the moral imperative of the common god God-fearing Americans.

(To note: this is the 1930s, the holiest people in the country were the early Catholic Irish who couldn't find jobs thanks to N.I.N.A. and the Italians who were looked down upon and some [not all] forced into a life of crime.)

So in 1936 Hearst and Anslinger, the dipshit duo, team up and start posting fabricated stories in Hearst's newspapers. It takes 1 year for the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937. That's not even a typo. They misspelt the damned plant's name. And even though this just seems like a tax on the plant, it effectively outlawed Hemp. And there went cheap everything, since everything was paper. Most cars were made out of paper during the depression. .^{[citation needed]}

(Note: 1936 was also the year the inspiring film "Reefer Madness" hit the streets. A propaganda film later turned into the adopter love child of pot heads everywhere)

Now as i feel i have been boring you for too long on with my recants of a Willie, lets jump ahead to sometime within the current years.

Everyone knows that Amsterdam is the marijuana haven of the world. Even if the laws aren't the most lenient in the world (I'm sure Siberia let's you smoke whenever) it has become the cultural centerpiece for the weed culture. Now Oakland is attempting to break out as it's stoned baby sister city. Yes, Oakland, California. Where there is a section colloquially known as Oaksterdam, and in this city are shops, and in these shops is, you guessed it, marijuana. marijuana loose, marijuana plants, marijuana cookies, drinks, salad dressing, lollipops and even olive oil. It's all medicinal but as it is it is probably the most lenient section of the US for marijuana. You can buy up to 8 ounces at a time nonetheless.

And you may think that the government should hate this because its all medical there aren't any taxes and it goes against federal law, well you should slam your head fiercely into the pavement because this one lone shop pays $900,000 a year in taxes. Thats 300k for state taxes and 600k for federal taxes.

Anyone paying attention to the news within the past 2 years would know that our economy got fucked like it was a pretty little boy in a prison with an inmate named Bessy. I'm saying our economy got ass-fucked. harshly, if you didn't get the simile. As of November 6, 2009 the national debt is:

$11,984,375,618,759.41

Almost 12 trillion dollars.

And here we have an awesome chance to make a shit load of money back by selling this one little weed and taxing it but we can't. And no one can come up with a coherent statement as to why not except that it makes you high and you can't trust someone who's high.

You can trust a drunk though.

America has Impresidentated (yeah i made that word up) plenty of drunk Presidents (Grant, et al.) and yet only as early as 1992 elected a man who has indulged in weed (Clinton), and even he had to say he didn't inhale. The latest 3 presidents have all admitted to some sort of drug use (I'm still gonna count Clinton). So maybe this should show us that America is ready to accept and deal with Marijuana being legalized. It's not harmful to the lungs any more than cigarettes and cigarettes get a government seal. It's not any more impairing to driving than alcohol (and has actually been tested to show that it causes people to be far better drivers than alcohol induced drivers).

Look It Up.

States have even begun legalizing marijuana (Maine and California) when they won't even legalize gay marriage (Maine and California).

Marijuana has caused violence though. Every day in Mexico, rival gangs fight on the streets of decrepit towns over marijuana. Oh wait, that's happening because we prohibited marijuana and s we've seen in plenty of gangster films, prohibition just leads to violence. 2700 deaths from Mexican citizens in 2007 alone. Prohibition just doesn't work to cut down pain, suffering, violence.

And it doesn't keep people out of prison either. Even though first time possession is usually a misdemeanor, excessive charges can add up to actual jail time, and if you are on probation even a small, extremely small, microscopic small, amount of marijuana can put you in jail. And this is for plant that has been misconstrued and lied about for years on end all the way back to the 1930s. Every year we incarcerate thousands of people for drug abuses and law bendings. When we could legalize it and turn those people into tax paying citizens who eat plenty of doritos.

Compare how many people die every year of outside influences:

Smoking- 435,000

Alcohol- 85,000

Car Accidents- 26,347

Murder- 20,308

Marijuana- 0 (yeah that number has been always been 0 since marijuana has been discovered)