LEGALIZED POT WOULD PROVIDE JOBS - AND A BETTER HIGH

I am not a pot smoker, but I do think marijuana should be legalized.
An ethics book I read for a class stated: "The U.S. would save about
$7.7 billion per year in enforcement costs and would generate between
$2.4 (billion) and $6.2 billion in tax revenue if marijuana were
legalized. In the U.S., there are (more than) 850,000 marijuana
arrests made each year, and more than 44,000 people are currently in
prison for marijuana offenses."

Since prisons are overflowing, if marijuana were legal, this would
open up a lot of space for criminals who actually need to be locked
up. Legalization also would allow police to be looking at more
important things rather than watching for pot dealers and for people smoking.

According to my book, marijuana is actually not a gateway drug like
most people suggest. It does not make people crave and use harder
drugs. People use marijuana before harder drugs only because
marijuana is widely available, making it easy to get. In
neighborhoods where cocaine is easy to get, people often try cocaine first.

Since the U.S. is broke, wouldn't legalizing this help generate
money? Perhaps the government could take over fields and hire people
to grow it. Wouldn't that generate more jobs? Then people could get
off welfare and actually get a job and work on growing government
marijuana. Plus, people would know they are getting legitimate weed
instead of buying it from some little-known guy down the street who
sold them something mixed with oregano. We could tax a lot out of it,
and that would be in addition to taxing alcohol and tobacco.

And to all you tokers: You'd get a better product for your money,
making your high even better!

Maria Marline

Duluth