Legalizing Marijuana More Popular Than Republicans And Republican Ideas

I just have to pass this DailyKos story along.

It’s a story on how according to national polling, the idea of legalizing marijuana is currently more popular than the Republican party and many Republican party ideas (including the War in Iraq & privatizing Social Security.)

It’s not all good news though, legalizing marijuana is still opposed by more Americans than it is favored. Current polling indicates about 40% of Americans support legalizing marijuana. Obviously it is important to get that number above 50%.

In order to do that, it’s important to share the many logical reasons why marijuana should be legalized:

1. To save money. The amount of non-violent people imprisoned all over the country for marijuana related “crimes” is in the hundreds of thousands. This costs the country a lot of money in prison costs, policing costs, and in the lost productivity of those people in jail for doing something that causes absolutely no harm anyone else. Considering the state of the economy, this is of huge importance.

2. To make money. If marijuana were legalized it could be taxed. Considering the size of the marijuana industry this would literally mean billions of extra dollars for the United States. States such as California (which is currently experiencing extreme economic difficulty) would benefit in particular. There’s also the issue of hemp manufacturing which I will not get into here, but it’s another way more money could be made through legalization.

3. Civil liberties. This should really be the #1 issue if we lived in a sane country where people actually valued freedom. It’s just flat out wrong for the government to tell people what they can and cannot grow on their own property or what they can or cannot put into their own bodies.

4. Lower crime rates. Much of the crime in America exists because marijuana is illegal. Look at alcohol prohibition in the 1920s and how it was responsible for the growth of organized crime. Drugs being illegal today causes far more problems than it could ever hope to solve. I have absolutely no doubt that murder rates around the country would significantly drop if marijuana were legalized.

5. Not a significant public health risk. Public health cannot possibly be used as a reason for marijuana being illegal considering that it has never once been shown to be the cause of death while cigarettes & alcohol cause many thousands of deaths every year.