Legalize Marijuana

      Medical marijuana is presently legal in 33 states, and recreational use is legal in ten states.  And of course at the federal level it is still officially illegal across the nation.  At the state level, the push continues to legalize it further.  My home state of Texas is one of the holdouts where it is still illegal for any kind of use.  The good news is that there is some discussion about changing that; the bad news is that the heavy conservative influence here makes that unlikely.

      So on that note, I shall jump right in and declare:  yes, absolutely, marijuana should be fully legalized nationwide.

      To begin, let's address the elephant in the living room, which is at present guzzling down a bottle of booze.  How ridiculously hypocritical it is that alcohol is legal (with a few constraints on who can purchase it) and very socially acceptable - and yet marijuana is not.  (Or at least, has not been for many decades).  Think of all the damage that alcohol does to our society, both medically, socially, financially, and emotionally.  Alcohol causes people to get drunk, beat their wives, get in fights, destroy their families, ruin their liver and their brain, and then get in their cars intoxicated and cause horrible accidents that kill and maim.  And alcohol is very addictive.

      Meanwhile, the typical marijuana user is content to just sit at home on his/her couch, eat Cheetos, and watch old movies.  And marijuana is not addictive.  Furthermore, the evidence mounts that marijuana has verifiable medical benefits to treat chronic pain and psychiatric problems. 

      Think of the zillions of dollars of law enforcement wasted on trying to stamp our marijuana.  This includes police, prosecutors, courtrooms, judges, and overcrowded jails.   Think of the invasion of privacy as police search our homes, our persons, our cars, and our luggage for illegal pot.  All of those resources could have been otherwise directed toward protecting the citizenry from robbery, assault, murder, fraud, and other acts of violence.  Think of the lives that have ruined because someone was caught long ago with a little pot; now they have a blot on their police records that will haunt them forever and make it very difficult to get meaningful employment.

      Yes, there are a lot of good reasons to NOT use marijuana.  In fact, because of those reasons, I personally do not touch the stuff.  But come on.  There are lots of things that we adults do that are not good for us and not good for society.  I mentioned alcohol above, but the list of other nasties includes:  overeating, lack of exercise, tobacco, abuse of legal drugs, illicit sex, reckless driving, and more.  Even just simply being a BAD PERSON harms you and others who come in contact with you.  But I would prognosticate that overeating and obesity are MUCH bigger (no pun intended) problems in this country than marijuana ever was.

    However, we must learn to reject this knee-jerk logic that says that if something is bad for you or bad for society, them government should step in.  Government does indeed have a role in our society, but it's a very limited role:  to protect life and property from violence, theft, and fraud.  And that's a pretty short list.  Nowhere in the Constitution nor the Declaration of Independence does it say anything about how the government should be our Lord and Master or our Nanny.  The relationship between adult citizens and the government should be as follows:  the citizen is the master, and the government is the servant - not the other way around.  Government is not "better" than us, and it has no business telling us how to run our private lives, or what we can or cannot ingest into our bodies.