CALIFORNIA: Four states out of 50 may not sound like much of a mandate, but the success of marijuana initiatives on the ballot last week suggests the nation is inching toward legalizing the once-demon weed.
California started the ball rolling 16 years ago with a medical marijuana law so broad, it makes a gram of weed cheaper and easier to get than a prescription for Vicodin. Now dozens of states allow adults access to marijuana as medicine, and four — Oregon, Alaska, Colorado and Washington — allow the drug to be sold outright, without even the pretense of illness.
All this is in defiance of a federal ban that deems marijuana as dangerous a drug as heroin with no legitimate medical use — a view radically out of step with what a majority of Americans believe.
Surveys show that more than half of the country’s voters think marijuana should be legal, and 75% believe it eventually will be.
Wyoming NORML says
Just wondering; did they make the people who sought to re legalize alcohol after Prohibition perform all these experiments and tests for safety and efficacy before they repealed the Volstead Act? Was there all this caution about the corruption of American youth? Was there all this concern about violating international treaties? Was there all this backlash from law enforcement? Of did they just vote in Congress to repeal it without the prohibitionists holding sway because they voted what the public wanted?
If they had, you would not have alcohol today. With millions of us out here who have done the research, this cautionary toe in the water approach is monumentally time-wasting and stupid. Just legalize it! We can take care of ourselves.