The war on drugs will only be solved if we legalize
marijuana (HCN, 10/31/05: The public lands’ big cash crop). Sadly,
and hypocritically, the agencies that are supposed to be solving
the drug problem look the other way when push comes to shove. They
make token arrests while leaving the cartels intact to rake in
millions of dollars and assemble arsenals of weapons.
If
state and federal policy-makers had more balls, they would legalize
pot and tax it, solving their states’ debt problems and
keeping innocent people out of prison. Once pot was legal, Mexican
cartels would have no reason to grow marijuana on public lands, and
their weapons, trash and poaching would disappear.
Policy-makers need to focus on more dangerous drugs, such as meth,
which is tearing communities apart. The danger of marijuana is not
the plant itself, but the criminal element it draws because
we’ve made it illegal.
Grant
Wiegert
Benson, Arizona
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Legalizing pot is the solution.
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