UP IN SMOKE Stories like these drive my absolutely batshit with disgust. An AP news story today reported federal and local cops seized more than 26,000 marijuana plants in the eastern Sierra Nevadas with a reported street value of nearly $79 million. If pot was legalized and taxed at even 25% (half as much as alcohol is in California) that would be $20,000,000 in desperately-needed tax revenues in a state where the governor wants to jerk out the rug from underneath HIV/AIDS patients and put more uninfected people at risk. I promised to keep my profanity to a minimum but this continued marijuana prohibition can only be described as “fucking stupid.” Seriously. That is $20M in funding up in smoke and for what? To satisfy the social conservatives who care WAY too much about who everybody is having sex with and how much fun they’re having? Our ass-backwards marijuana policy continues to (A) deny our government desperately needed tax revenue, (B) divert law enforcement personnel from truly important duties, (C) make it easier for minors to obtain pot, (D) create an atmosphere where organized crime can profit in the black market — just like in the days of alcohol prohibition — which also increases the associated violent crime, (E) bloat our prison budget to incarcerate marijuana offenders and also take space away needed for violent criminals, and (F) encourage criminal gangs to devastate our state and national parks with the damage caused by these clandestine farms. And that’s just off the top of my head.

Yet NONE of the gutless candidates for California governor will go on record backing legalization because they’re afraid of the ire of conservative voters. Do we really want foolish, spineless wimps like these running our state? Conservatism, at least social conservatism, is a mental disorder characterized by a need to control how everybody else lives. In a state where conservatives want to lock up “criminals” whenever possible (yet rebel against increasing taxes to pay for our $10B annual and growing prison budget), we can no longer have our cake and eat it too.

What can you do? First write and call your state and federal representatives and tell them why it’s foolish to continue marijuana prohibition (use my two leading paragraphs as talking points). To your state assembly members and senators, tell them to support California Assemblyman Tom Ammiano’s marijuana legalization bill AB390 (or to introduce a similar bill in your state). To your federal representatives, the U.S. Department of Justice and the White House, demand that marijuana be removed from the DEA Schedule 1 list of drugs, which also lists heroin and PCP. The money saved on enforcement and gained in taxes can go to drug treatment and education (including alcohol), and to Education Health Care, Infrastructure and everything else being hit by the economic crisis.

We need not cave in to the “family values” theocratic nosy-parkers any longer. We’re all paying, literally, for their repressive social dictates and now that George W. Bush’s presidency has them reeling and disoriented, now is the time to seize back our country from the “Moral” Majority. Seriously, take some action. It feels good to do the right thing. Oh, and by the way, I’ve been clean and sober for over twelve years, so my stake in this issue has nothing to do with personal use. I’m just sick of moralizing busybodies dictating social policy and then making us all pay for it.