"Legalize it, and I will advertise it"
~Peter Tosh~
O man, if this is true, we will be naming a National Holiday after you in my homeland. Are you kidding me? Making the ganja plant legal will give you icon status right next to brother Bob with Yawdies world wide, and with a significant segment of the A-merry-can population right here at home. I just hope that they vote.
As someone who does not partake of the good collie weed (stop laughing, I don't) I can honestly approach this debate from a totally objective point of view. And if we are going to be fair we have to say that decriminalizing the drug would be the best way to approach the drug epidemic that has been sweeping this country for years.
The O man himself has said that the current war on drugs is an "utter failure" and that we should "shift the paradigm to a public health approach" in how we deal with this issue. From all accounts we could generate anywhere from "$10 to $14 billion in savings and taxes every year", and we could put a serious dent in all the money we spend on public safety and redirect those resources to areas where it is really needed in the law enforcement arena. It all sounds good to me, and all I can tell you is that there are some very smart people who agree with that approach as well.
I am just hoping that this is part of the new green economy that his O ness is always talking about. We can only wish. Now this is change that I could believe in. (Oh field stop it, you are an officer of the court, why are you encouraging pot smoking?) I am not. If it is made legal it should come with a warning label, just like cigarettes. And folk s should be encouraged to smoke responsibly, just like drinking.
Now you wanna be Rastas who believe that "the herb is the healing of the nation" don't go getting your hopes up too high just yet. ( No pun intended) His O ness has been known to go back on a promise or two of late. And from all accounts there is a good chance that he might select a real tough law and order man, Jim Ramstad, who would never heed Peter Tosh's words, as his Drug Czar.
So let's see what his O ness does. I know he smokes cigarettes, or he used to, so maybe there will be some sensitivity to this issue, smoking I mean. Maybe just maybe the O man will throw us secular progressives a bone with some meat on it. It would be about time, I am starting to get really hungry.
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