Light It Up One Time!

What if we could get rid of the deficit, help the poor and have the number one school system in the world all without raising taxes? Sounds good right? Well I think this is all possible if we do one thing…….Legalize marijuana, cannabis, reefer, weed, grass, wacky tobacy, pot, smoke, endow, bud, cheetah, cheeba, hash, dope, green bean, marry jane, creep. I know this sounds crazy right? Wrong here’s how it works. We start off by making government approved marijuana legal. Now we eliminate the subsidies that go to farmers not to grow crops. We have those farmers start growing marijuana instead of corn, wheat and so on. (Marijuana is cheaper to grow) The farmers would be monitored by the MGC (Marijuana Growing Council) paid for by the money we are saving in subsidies to make sure the product is the best and purest without chemicals and/or additives. Those farmers would sell their crop to the government, who would then set up factories to make them into marijuana cigarettes with a filter. The cost would be around $1.00 a pack (based on the cost for cigarette companies now with better benefits and higher pay). The government sells them to convenience stores, bars, and liquor stores, who have to buy a MGC permit to sell at an annual cost of $500.00. The profits from the permit would go directly to national scholarships. The retailer’s price on a pack of marijuana cigarettes would be $5.00 a pack with $3.00 in profits going directly to the local school system and $1.00 going to the retailer. The taxes on a pack would be an additional $17.00. For a grand total of $22.00 a pack.
$8.00 on every pack sold would go to the federal government for the deficient. When the deficient is paid off we would drop that to $2.00 for a surplus, and the rest would go toward national scholarships.
Now what to do with the other $9.00?

$1.50 would go into job training and housing programs for the poor.
$2.00 would go to lowering state taxes/local police
$1.50 would go to social security
$0.50 would go to drug education
$0.50 would go to cancer/AIDS research
$2.00 would go to protecting our borders and homeland security
$0.50 would go towards health care costs
$0.50 would go towards prisons/rehab

(www.norml.org) According to the latest government surveys, more than 76 million Americans have smoked marijuana at some point in their lives, nearly 34% of the adult population. Nearly 19 million people have smoked marijuana during the last year, and approximately 11 million in the last month.
I know you’re thinking we would have a country full of stoners, but we would regulate this the same as alcohol. You would have to be 21 to purchase and would not be able to operate a motor vehicle under the influence. The police would have an on the spot blood THC test to see if you are indeed driving under the influence. If you are in a government program where the government helps with job training, welfare, or housing you must take a drug test every week that includes marijuana. If you fail more than 1 time a year you are cut off from all government programs for 2 years.

To insure we don’t have drug dealers still selling their own marijuana we make it a felony with mandatory sentence of 10 years without parole to have, sell, or transport any drugs other than MGC approved cigarettes. Would we have a large prison population? (www.norml.org) More than 734,000 Americans were arrested on marijuana charges last year, and more than 5 million Americans have been arrested for marijuana offenses in the past decade; nearly 90% of those arrests were for simple possession for personal use, not trafficking or sale. We would simply replace those arrested for possession with those using harder drugs or selling. Sure, at first but people would be afraid to use or sell harder drugs. After the first few people got busted people would get the message. We could even have those dealers who got busted work in the government factories and use the money they would make fund rehab centers and drug education.

Drug dealers don’t make much on marijuana; they use that to build a client base where they can introduce harder drugs to make more. What would happen to a drug dealer who has only clients who do other drugs than marijuana? First of all they would not be able to attract new clients, and the old ones would die or get arrested. Can you imagine how fast a user would roll on a dealer if he got caught with meth while driving his car? He would be looking at 20 years. “Sure, we will cut your sentence to 10 years if you show us where you got it” We are not even taking into consideration with the increased boarder patrols and homeland security they will have a harder time getting product into the country. The cost of cocaine (the base for crack) would skyrocket.

Some would argue that the use of marijuana would go up, well so be it. If the public is educated on how to use it responsibly who cares? Marijuana is far less dangerous than alcohol or tobacco. It fails to inflict the types of serious health consequences these two legal drugs cause. Around 50,000 people die each year from alcohol poisoning and more than 400,000 deaths each year are attributable to tobacco smoking. By comparison, marijuana is nontoxic and cannot cause death by overdose. (www.norml.org) By the way I don’t smoke marijuana and I don’t sell it, I just thought this was an interesting thought.
Ok, so there is the plan I threw it together, I’m sure I didn’t address something. Let me know what you think.

Alton Blair