In my 52 years, my lips may have touched a dozen joints, mostly in my early twenties. I do not recall my brain being affected by it. I am not a smoker so inhaling makes me cough horribly so the whole experience is pretty pointless to me. Once I felt the effect, after eating a couple of potent brownies. It was a fun night with a lot of laughing.

Today I found this MSN headline about consideration of legalizing marijuana in California. What a good idea!

We should be able to buy marijuana by brand name in boxes at the drug store. There would be ingredient labels. The stuff would be cheaper, safer and more accessible. Those of us that are not interested are not affected. Those that are, who now have to take actions that incriminate them to get it, do no longer have to hide. The government could tax it heavily, like alcohol, cigarettes and gasoline. The price would be substantially lower than what it costs from the guy in the hooded sweatshirt on the street corner. And the entire criminal trafficking enterprise would starve out for lack of market.

I do not believe that there would be any more use of marijuana than we currently have already, whether with juveniles, or with adults. It would just be a lot cheaper and safer.

And while we’re at it, why don’t we do the same with cocaine? I have never touched it, so I don’t know what the attraction is, but there must be a powerful one, or else there would not be such a massive market.

Selling cocaine at the drugstore would drive the entire cartel industry out of business. The market would be gone overnight. No more killings in Mexico, the police corruption would ebb off, since the money would be gone, and the brutality would subside.

Sounds like a win/win/win/win proposition. Where do I sign?