Yes, for fuck's sake. And not this medical marijuana bullshit nonsense. Marijuana should be as legal as tomatoes. The concept of a plant being illegal is insane to me.

>> ^budzos:
Yes, for fuck's sake. And not this medical marijuana bullshit nonsense. Marijuana should be as legal as tomatoes. The concept of a plant being illegal is insane to me.


Your comment made me think of the vast number of poisonous plants that aren't illegal, plants like buttercups, bracken, St John's Wort, yew trees, rhododendron bushes, privet hedges, all of these are highly toxic and yet are perfectly legal to grow, in fact are very commmonplace. I'm only scratching the surface here. Oh - a good example would be poppies, perfectly legal to grow, definitely poisonous, and can be harvested for opiates (although as far as I know it's the processing of the opiates that is illegal in most countries).

Marijuana isn't toxic, no more harmful than alcohol, and has been shown to offer benefits for both physical and mental illnesses. It's even been shown to help people become more aligned with what is referred to by psychologists as 'neural neutral' - i.e. normal.

Yeah legalize it.

It's ridiculous how much money is spent trying to combat a substance that is in more ways than not safer or has greater benefits than alcohol. Estimates vary but most reviews I've seen range the cost of combating such a 'drug' as more than $10 billion per year in the US alone.

Example:
2010 had the US spend $15+ billion at Federal level and another $25+ at state level on the war on drugs.
That's $40 billion that could go towards medical, social, education programs, or even to work towards paying off some depts.

This site's stats seem to be including more than marijuana, but at near the end of April 2012, the total is already over $12 billion, almost 13.
http://www.drugsense.org/cms/wodclock

An estimated 50% give/take of citizens have used or use the substance.

Supply and demand encourage drug syndicates to form and become more ruthless in their enterprises, the prohibition on alcohol is a decent example.

The substance when consumed is significantly safer with heavy machinery like public driving etc than alcohol (not saying that driving stoned should be encouraged, but far less dangerous then alcohol), and it's common place behavioral effects leave the consumer with greater control re social behavior and better rational processing opposed to alcohol when high levels of the substances are compared.
Not trying to smash booze, just highlighting that if 1 is acceptable, then the other dam well should be as well.

Governments allow smoking Tabasco to be legal because of the taxation/financial benefits despite the well known and documented issues with the substance.

The medicinal properties alone should be enough to give the substance leeway that most other recreational drugs wouldn't receive.

Rather than spending money against it, regulating it would make it safer for use while also turning a profit for the government and being legal it could then be taxed to further the financial return.

As far as i know, no one has ever died from an overdose of marijuana.

I personally haven't used it for a few years (save the rare one-off opportunistic occasions) but am a strong advocate that it's a good and/or reasonable substance for personal use.