The case for legal pot

I recently read that a pot dealer in Trenton, Tenn., was given 30 years in the penitentiary for distributing a couple thousand pounds of marijuana. This is an extremely foolish carbon-copy repeat of the religiously spawned federal Prohibition of beer and other alcoholic products nearly a century ago.

The only drugs I do are aspirin, Finasteride and a few other benign medications my VA doctors prescribe; however, I have known hundreds of good, solid citizens who do smoke pot in their leisure time, and who do function as honest, upstanding members of the business world.

There are many positives we can achieve by legalizing and regulating the marijuana trade:

Legalization would dry up the U.S. market for large drug cartels like those in Mexico and their gangster-reps in American cities.

Legalization would justify the release from long prison sentences of smalltime pot salesmen, mules, etc., probably as many as 500,000 men and women who are rotting away in prison right now.

Legalization would enable us to drastically reduce the vast and expensive network of federal “pot police” and the state, county and city deputies now required to round up the malefactors from every level of the marijuana marketing chain, many billions of dollars in savings.

Legalization could generate taxes. It would provide billions in income to help pay down our national debt and help fund state, county and city projects.