WITCH HUNT!!

Happy May Day to all of you Wiccans and Communists out there, but I'm talking about a different kind of witch hunt.  For DECADES generations of children were led to believe that marijuana is a horrid mind and body diminishing drug that dooms you to a life of infertility and idiocy.  Now, I'm not going to sit here and pretend pot doesn't make you a little slow in the head, but lets be honest with ourselves here, a night of heavy drinking kills more brain cells than a few weeks worth of grass smoking.  Furthermore, this study, by UCLA, shows that marijuana smoking, even HEAVY use, does not correlate to higher incidences of cancer in any way.  Now, forever one of the main justifications for the banning of marijuana in the US (aside from the gratuitous "its illegal" that no one can explain) has been the supposed negative health effects.  I can vividly recall my health teacher in 6th grade telling me "smoking 1 marijuana joint is equal to smoking 5 cigarettes."  Well, you were either misinformed, or egregiously lying.  I'd guess the latter, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.  Also among the many supposed  negative health effects is sterility.  Well, let me put it this way, I know a lot of pot heads who have kids, who quite frankly it would have been better if the weed did make them sterile.  Not because they're pot heads, because they're dumbasses.  So lets just say that assertion doesn't hold water.  Now, when the holier than thou anti-drug douches tell you that it's bad for your lungs and that you'll get cancer, you can kindly refer them to this study, which actually says there is the "suggestion of a protective effect" to your lungs.  I'm not going to sit here and say that marijuana is this miracle drug, or that everyone should use it, but honestly, it is a plant that anyone can grow in their own home, and actually has legitimate, studied medical benefits.  Furthermore, the archaic laws that outlaw marijuana use have contributed to the incarceration of COUNTLESS petty pot smokers and growers who, assuming that was all they were doing, were clearly causing no harm.  So, we've got over crowded prisons, a failed drug war that is costing tax payers billions of dollars a year, and a natural plant that does ZERO physical harm to people who use it that is just dying for the federal government to regulate, sell and tax.  State cigarette taxes alone added $18 billion to state revenues in the year 2005, and cigarettes are proven to be both addictive and deadly.  So why, pray tell, is it that an innocuous harmless plant that does no harm to anyone is COSTING the US billions of dollars instead of making the government billions of dollars, and saving it billions of dollars on a war that it is not winning, and paying for the incarceration of thousands of stoners.  But go to the store and buy your Jack Daniels (which kills your liver and brain) and your pack of cigarettes (which kill your lungs) without the slightest hint of irony.  

Just once I would like common sense to prevail in the American political process, but as yet I have been disappointed.