The Drug Of The Right

When I was in high school in the late-60s, I steadfastly refused marijuana on the grounds that it was illegal by law. A good friend was working in a drug store. We did reds, whites, and Ludes. They were FDA-approved drugs. My mindset was not much different from the present population of America addicted to prescription drugs. I was wrong then and they are wrong now, for America is suffering a plague of prescription drugs. Overdose death from legal pills has outstripped the old demon drugs of cocaine and heroin. The country is flooded with Oxycodins and Viocodins, which are produced non-stop by their makers, Purdue Pharma and Abbott Laboratories. No one is raiding their laboratories or sending police into the boardroom to halt this production of a phony and deadly opiate, because Abbott labs pay politicians to demonize marijuana, heroin, and cocaine. The war on drugs has been lost by the governments of the world. Reefer dealers make house calls in New York City and cocaine has reached the death offense nations of the Far East. Both are criminal under the present laws of the USA, however the time has come to legalize drugs as suggested in Ben Elton’s HIGH SOCIETY a brilliantly funny novel about an obscure MP rocketing to fame on the back of a drug legalization campaign. Free the weed. A correspondent in TIME magazine suggested back in 2009; “A deal: give us drugs, after a certain age — say, 80 — all drugs, any drugs we want. In return, we will give you our driver’s licenses.” This offer is only chipping away at laws such as New York’s Rockefeller drug laws, which have packed the prisons of America to a point where 1% of our population is a guest of the state. This number translates into 25% of the world’s inmates. At $30,000 per prisoner the penal budget for the USA comes to $90,000,000,000. Not all those 3 million convicts are pot smokers, but enough of them are to consider cutting them loose to hang around their houses smoking bongs. Barack Obama was subjected to a barrage from online questioners about legalization of marijuana. Pot is the #1 cash crop in California. $14 billion last year. 20% tax = $2.8 billion. Carlos Santana, guitar god, suggested, “Legalize marijuana and take all that money and invest it in teachers and in education. You will see a transformation in America.” Right on. Not that I smoke pot any more. I don't smoke it any less either. It's time for Obama to come out and say, "Free the weed." That bold statement is in our country's best interests no matter what Big Pharma pays TV to tell the people what to think. ps I’m not for Hydro-weed, but natural grass. It’s the real thing.