Two new reader opions today. Thanks you both. If you’d like to have your opinion posted on our website, please send  us your thoughts on our “contact us” page. - Admin

“I believe marijuana should be legalized. Consider the fact that alachol kills, cigarettes kill, but have you ever heard of or seen of a death from marijuana? You can’t overdose, or anything. America needs money. Leglization of marijuana is the best for this problem. Sure medical marijuana is a step forward, but what about us who do it to relax? Such as myself. Marijuana eases pain, cigarettes cause future pain. Cancer, and even death. Over…well a lot of damn deaths from marijuana. Im smokin whether its legalized or not. But god forbid it should be legalized. God made it, “the all healing plant”  Man made beer, god made Pot, who do you trust?” - Michael

“I think that the government should legalize marijuana for many reasons. There is no way that weed can kill you, the amount it would take to overdose is impossible to smoke, literally. There are also no long term effects, if anything its helping everyone with their eyes and to feel better! I mean smoking may make you a little more forgetful and lazy but people do that on their own. If the government would sell weed first off they could make a shit load of money,because of taxes, they would put a lot of dealers out of business, make them get REAL jobs…I mean the list goes on and on however im in class and must go! Thanks for reading “- Delia

           

1. My husband and I are MMJ patients. I can tell you first hand I have seen the benefits of MMJ on myhusband with Lupus. With his ups and downs of Lupus and the last medication for Lupus being perscribed 50 years ago is Plaquenil, it only helps to somewhat control Lupus ( it does not help with the pain). The only alternitive for pain is strong addictive pain pill’s that leave you catatonic and unable to be involved with your family or activities you enjoy. My husband also has day’s that every muscle in his body locks up and he can’t even talk to ask for help, that’s when I give him some MMJ vapor’s from the bag then his muscle’s start to loosen up (If I had tried to give him pain pill’s he would throw them up). As for the myth that if you use marijuana you will get nothing done in life is just that “a myth”, my husband has 2 masters degree’s as well as being a engineer, I have compleated many classes for my nursing career as well as classes on despencing medication and have been in the health care field for over 10 year’s. -Michelle

2. Marijunana is more useful than harmful. It can be useful for people with anything from Cancer to anxiety disorders and with FAR less side effects. Most importantly, it’s not a potentially lethal drug like 99% of pain killers, cancer treatments, and anti-depressants. I honestly believe it is not the government keeping Marijunana illegal.. it’s the pharmaceutical companies. If one drug can replace so many other more dangerous drugs that’s bad for business. - Jenn

           

1. Free The Weed,, Its a simple thought. The Hemp plant can be used for so many things. Fuel being the main use. But we as a people have the responsibility to use with caution. It takes baby steps, so please decriminalize weed first, then make your laws and taxes. Ive been smoking for 20 years and im not alone. There are millions of us everywhere. Free the Weed. thank you Dewbeesnacks

2.Cannabis should be legalized first and foremost because its prohibition represents an unfair restraint of trade, and an unfair preference by Congress for certain industrial and agricultural interests over others. Historically, cannabis prohibition was enacted after a very successful lobbying and fear campaign waged by these interests, who saw cannabis (”hemp”) as a significant competitor. Theseinterests included petrochemical, pharmaceutical, logging and paper processing, cotton and other big economic players.

In order to prohibit cannabis, these economic interests had to borrow a foreign slang word for this popular, beneficial plant (”marijuana”) and disguise its everyday identity as hemp. Hemp was a part of America’s success and economic independence from the very beginning. For a while after Independence, it was mandatory for farmers to grow a certain amount of hemp, so that the US Navy and merchant ships would have enough hemp rope and other products for their growing
needs.

With the Industrial Revolution, hemp began to fall behind. The cotton gin made cotton easier and faster to harvest, while hemp still required difficult hand harvesting and retting. But in the early 1930s, the invention of a new hemp harvester threatened to bring hemp back to its rightful place as America’s “moral fiber”. That’s when the competing economic interests struck, using the most blatant lies and fear-mongering to convince elected representatives that cannabis represented a new and vicious threat to the nation’s youth.

In addition to a readily-renewable source of fibers that now require the wholesale destruction of our slow-growing forests or chemically-intensive cotton monoculture to produce, the prohibition of cannabis has cost us an inexpensive, readily-renewable, clean fuel; a biodegradeable substitute for virtually everything, including plastics, now made from petrochemicals; and, most shockingly, the first food crop ever cultivated by human beings, rich in protein and essential fatty acids, that will grow in any type of soil and enrich it in the process.

This has been done in the name of protecting American citizens from themselves, and a moralistic protectionism that presumes to decide what a person may think, eat, smoke, drink, or rub on their bodies like catnip.

Prohibition has also deprived us of a medicine so useful that today even the pharmaceutical companies that once lobbied to ban it now seek to market patented products made from one or more of cannabis’ constituents, while still denying to sick and dying people the whole plant and the benefits it confers, physical, mental, and spiritual.

The enforcement of prohibition has itself become a very great evil, in which corruption, informants, set-ups, planted and stolen evidence are the norms. Forfeiture laws skew law enforcement priorities. Court dockets are crowded with non-violent possession or minor dealing cases while “big fish”, as in any criminal enterprise, can pay for protection. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of otherwise law-abiding Americans have been tainted with criminal records for
choosing one type of relaxation or medicine over another.

In America today, prison guard is a fast-growing field. Giving urine for
pre-employment analysis has become an acceptable practice. And yet another generation of kids is learning that the government can’t be trusted, and that the way to survive is by hiding and lying.

Can a change be made?

YES, WE CANNABIS! - http://www.CannabisResource.com

           

1. Marijauna sould be legalized for two resons.1) if the govenment would go back in time the Amiracan Idians was smokeing pot on peace pipes.witch is the reson they called them PEACE PIPES.2)if the government legalized weed the deficet would go away,Make a pack of weed ciggs put them on the shelf ,tax them,and must be 18 years or older to posess

2.I believe that marijauna should be legalized. There is no reason other than politics that pot should be illegal. The health risks of pot are the same as tobacco, and not nearly as catastrophic as alcohol and presciption pain killers and anti anxiety medications. You can not overdose on marijauna. And if you have to quit you won’t have withdrawl nearly as bad as alcohol and narcotic meds. Thegovernment needs to quit making pot seem so bad. There is nothing bad about it. The only reason the public thinks it is bad and a gateway drug, isbecause the government can’t figure out how to make money off of it. Once they figure that out, it wil be legal and then they will look like the hypocrites they are.

           

I would like to restore cannabis to the respected position it has held for thousands of years. Cannabis is a sacred plant; a blessing of God.

Why are we fighting a battle against this plant? A battle that cannot, should not, nor ever will be won. People are needlessly dying; jailed and fined; families are destroyed; futures destroyed because fearful politicians believed the plant was evil.

The truth is slowing being revealed. Marijuana will be thebreakthrough in medicine this world has been looking for; hemp will regain it’s valuable place in the industrial world; our economy will recover, and the people will no longer bear the burden of this insidious attack on The Holy Plant.

           

Anyone curious about the effects of legalizing marijuana should read Norman H. Clark’s “Deliver us from Evil,” a history of the prohibition of alcohol and narcotics.

Alcohol was legalized — in part — in order to deprive organized crime of money. Over time, the war on drugs has had little impact on drug use.

By abolishing the war we would not only save billions of dollars in expenses, we could earn billions through taxing marijuana. Every scientific study shows that on-demand and court-ordered drug-treatment programs cut drug use more cost-effectively than programs attempting to cut access to drugs.

– Susan McKeehan, La Conner

Will marijuana users really pay taxes?

There is a flaw in the thinking of legalizing marijuana. First, if we tax pot, what says the drug pushers will pay the taxes. Who will pay the cost of enforcement? Next, the so-called savings on the cost of enforcement doesn’t take into account the illegal driving that will occur and need for police involvement. The taxing will not make the drug healthy; lung disease and brain damage is still possible. Finally, taxation will not stem users’ need for more stimulation with more potent and deadly drugs. It is ironic to compare pot’s taxation as used on alcohol and cigarettes, both of which cost us dearly medically and legally.

– Jim Morris, Renton

Effective marijuana test comes before legalization

Your front-page article on marijuana may merit serious consideration subject to just one question: Is there a court-accepted test for measuring the level of marijuana in blood?

I have generally been against the legalization of drugs because of their addictive characteristics and tendency to cause damage to the user. Also, I believe one of the most serious crimes that goes underpenalized is driving under the influence of alcohol and drugs, a criminal undertaking that seriously endangers innocent members of society.

Hence, I do not believe that pot should be legalized unless there is an accepted test for the level of marijuana in the blood that the politically correct liberals and civil libertarians will be unable to get tossed out of court.

I disagree with the “me” generation and defense lawyers in that I do not believe individual rights should be placed before the rights and well-being of society. If police officers can test for the influence of pot and drivers can be prosecuted for a DUI, then perhaps it may be time to legalize pot.

– Harvey Gillis, Bellevue

The Seattle Times Company

           

I DO think pot should be legalized because marijuana doesn’t kill you, its
the cigarettes. If cigarettes are legal then so should weed because that
nicotine in cigarettes cause people to get cancer and when the doctors don’t reach the cancer in time then the person dies. Cigarettes shouldn’t be legal cause thats the thing killing people not pot. So I think pot should be legalized. Please take my opinion in consideration.
Thank you
Youknowit.com

           

First let me make it clear, I know marijuana should be legalized.
There are many factors and different reasons. The only thing I hear are politics.

Feds give us money to follow their rules, so our state, even though we voted to legalize ignores it, because if we don’t, we might not get fed. money.

First lets start out with a few facts.

One is that marijauana is only thought of as a drug. Marijuana is the female plant of cannabis. The male plant is usually called hemp
which is what we made rope with for our boats 75 years ago. The female plant makes a bud when not fertilized by the male. The bud of a female plant is the only part that has THC in it. Hence thats what everone is talking about.

Now the female bud, which gets all the attention, can also be used to
practically eliminate most over the counter cold meds, this threatens the drug companies. Smoking THC creates hunger, it helps you sleep, it is useful as a muscle relaxant, these are all facts and unlike the meds they advertise on TV, with no side effects.

The main problem is people think it’s addictive. It’s not. It’s simply a matter of taste. If you don’t have medical reasons to smoke then, don’t. It’s the smoke that hurts your lungs, not the THC……. But the emense profit that can be produced and taxed, not even talking about the bud.

Well it’s just mind blowing…………..

How about the fact the the male plant, which can be grown in 3 months can be used to relace trees for paper, clothing, rope,
and about a hundred other things can also be manufactured and taxed but we’re not even dicusssing that.. I mean really, I’m talking about the leftovers. Blankets, tents, this stuff is tough…and lasts like canvas.

Bye the way, Im not even getting into the fact that to purchase you have to deal with people. These people usually have other drugs
for sale and that’s how you wind up getting envolved in other drugs. If you could just pick up your, pot, lollipops, brownies, cereal, or other
form of choice at the State distrubition center you wouldn’t have to deal with them.

Speaking of them, how many people do we have locked in a jail for POT. Nobody is gonna want to let them out.
It’s shameful.

BOTTOM LINE
LEGALIZE

-David

           

Apparently, it was nothing personal after all. Apparently, it was strictly business all along.

After generations of defending capital punishment and marijuana possession laws on moral, ethical and religious grounds, after years of declaring that the death penalty acted as a deterrent against violent crime and that pot smokers were more dangerous to society than, say, alcohol consumers, all of a sudden thanks to our economic crisis more and more mainstream powerbrokers are considering dramatic changes to our criminal justice system.

The New York Times today has a late-arriving piece by Ian Urbina which posits that lawmakers in several states are considering abandoning the death penalty because it’s just too expensive and cuts into other law enforcement priorities. State officials are beginning to acknowledge that they can more productively spend their budget funds on cracking unsolved cases or ensuring better police protection than on keeping pot smokers in prison or fighting for decades with capital defendants. This, Urbina writes, is forcing a sea-change around the nation:

“Last year, in an effort to cut costs, probation and parole agencies in Arizona, Kentucky, Mississippi, New Jersey and Vermont reduced or dropped prison time for thousands of offenders who violated conditions of their release. In some states, probation and parole violators account for up to two-thirds of prison admissions each year; typical violations are failing drug tests or missing meetings with parole officers.

As prison crowding has become acute, lawsuits have followed in states like California, and politicians find themselves having to choose among politically unattractive options: spend scarce tax dollars on expanding prisons, loosen laws to stem the flow of incarcerations, or release some nonviolent offenders.”

This trend toward releasing non-violent offenders naturally begs the question: what about legalizing marijuana possession and lowering the drinking age? A California lawmaker Monday introduced legislation that would legalize (and tax) pot there. In Colorado, as seen this past Sunday on 60 Minutes, the police chief in Boulder (which houses a raucous University of Colorado) made a compelling case for saving money by reducing the drinking age from 21. Better to have police officers tracking violent crime, the argument goes, than writing tickets for college kids who are going to drink no matter what.

These declarations, from the political and legal arena, are not just isolated voices shouting into the wilderness. Consider the late, great Milton Friedman, the Nobel Laureate, former Reagan advisor, and esteemed scholar associated with the very conservative Hoover Institution. He was among hundreds of important economists who argue that pot should be legalized and taxed - and that the income from such taxation could generate billions in new revenues and billions more in enforcement savings. If you live in California, what would you rather have? Pot smokers whose cases are tying up the legal system? Or better health care and roads thanks to a marijuana tax. I’m just asking the question-and others are too.

Friedman and his colleagues first made these arguments years ago - before the economy tanked. Is it time to take his view more seriously with states facing huge budget shortfalls that threaten to curtail vital projects and policies? It is such a great leap from releasing prisoners from prison early to save money and not sending them there at all to save more? I would suspect a survey of police officials and prosecutors, and a survey of state budget officials, would indicate that the matter is being taken more seriously today than it ever has been.

It’s not my place to advocate anything - so please don’t write and accuse me of being Cheech or Chong. All I am saying is that the economic case for legalizing marijuana, and for lower the drinking rate, is as compelling as it has ever been and that, in a time of great changes in the interaction between government and the governed, it would not be the worst thing in the world to have a serious national debate on the topic. If we are going to lower state and federal budgets for criminal justice, if we are going to be emptying our prisons anyway to save costs, let’s make sure we do it in a way that maximizes the opportunities available to us. 

 (CBS)  Attorney Andrew Cohen analyzes legal issues for CBS News and CBSNews.com.

CBS News.com