Marijuana Debate

In 10,000 years, not one person has died from marijuana use. The addiction to pot is a mental one, unlike that to alcohol, cigarettes, caffeine and many other substances that could be classified as drugs if our government were so inclined to classify them as such. Its withdrawal cannot kill you, unlike alcohol. It does not lead to other drugs, like anti-marijuana pundits will tell you. And it has many practical uses in life whether it's medicinal or in making products like paper, textiles and oil products. What is it about marijuana that scares our country so? The real problem is that our law makers are influenced by drug and prison companies. Our country has gone from "for and by the people" to "for and by the corporations". It is assinine that one can get a prescription for oxycodon, which is more addictive than heroin, and not marijuana. It is absurd that numerous people are arrested every day for smoking marijuana, an action that hurts no one, and police who murder innocent people, i.e. Shawn King, are allowed to roam freely. Every person I know, including police officers, believe that marijuana should be, if not legal, at least decriminalized. Our economy is in a scary place, one that is approaching that of the Great Depression. That was a time when we were in the midst of another prohibition, one on alcohol. One way for us to stimulate our economy was to take the money out of the black market, and put it on main street. Why are we so proud as to think this wouldn't work this time? How many of you out there smoke weed? Wouldn't you buy it from the gas station if it were available? Wouldn't that make for increased tax revenues? Would you smoke more weed just because it's more readily available? I know that when I was in High School, it was easier to get weed than alcohol. If it were legal, wouldn't that make it harder for minors to get? Wouldn't that end the drug crimes associated with weed? Wouldn't our government save the money it spends every year on incarcerating marijuana related criminals? It seems to me that this is an obvious solution, but our government is too obtuse when it comes to this matter. Our politicians receive too much money from the big companies who don't want to lose their funding. Phizer is afraid that if marijuana is legalized, all theses drugs they spend millions on developing to fight aids, glaucoma, nausea, etc., will no longer be needed. These private companies that run these prisons are afraid they will no longer have over population and won't receive the $50,000 a year per inmate that they currently receive. We, as a country, really need to reconsider some of our positions and determine if those laws we made decades ago were actually for our best interest, or the best interest of the owners of these large corporations.