Legalizing Marijuana Is the Answer

I just read an article about how states are cutting Medicaid care in order to save money. The Medicaid program serves some 58 million disabled and poor Americans. In order to make ends meet, states are cutting payments to doctors or paying bills late and trimming benefits. They are eliminating things like liver transplants, insulin pumps, root canals, obesity surgery and even hospice care. The elderly may suffer the most from all of this; walking around with no teeth in their mouth because Medicaid no longer covers dentures. I guess that’s why they make food supplements like, Ensure. The needs of Medicaid have never been higher because of the economy and job losses. As Federal stimulus money is evaporating for Medicaid, some states also face multibillion-dollar deficits.

The choices are difficult for states because the have already cut expenses to the bone. Shaving doctors and hospital payments with no economic recovery in sight, it leaves on to ask, what’s next. Some states are considering lowering payment rates to nursing homes or even a further reduction of payments to doctors.

What all this means is something we already knew, the states are all in big trouble. You can bet that the power’s that be, is staying up all night daydreaming of how they can extract more money from us. They have already raised the cost of licenses of all types. I have even heard where one town actually charges a yearly fee to walk you dog in the public park. It probably has been already proposed to start charging for our carbon footprint. Did my grandparents have a carbon footprint? Maybe oxygen is next.

So what is the answer to this horrible dilemma? I can’t help laughing, because the answer is right in front of their face. I won’t say this is the solution to all the state woes but a additional revenue of several billion a year can’t hurt. Are you ready? It’s Marijuana. Legalize and tax it. If we can have cigarettes and booze than why not marijuana? Marijuana is certainly more beneficial than both of them. There are many, many studies that have shown the benefits of marijuana. It has been proven to help conditions like glaucoma, multiple sclerosis, epilepsy, cancer and AIDS. Besides helping literally thousands with various medical conditions, it would be done without the all the risks that pharmaceuticals provide. Marijuana has been around and used medically since

In addition to bringing money in with taxes, the legalization of marijuana would mean jobs. These are jobs to farm it, factories to package it, workers to ship it, and sell it. Think of all the jobs this would create in all of the states. Besides all of this, states would save billions a year on arresting, housing and feeding people in prison. They could eliminate court costs and curb drug cartel activities all in one swoop. States would have so much money coming in they might even be able to lower the price of something. Now wouldn’t that be something.

I recently, read that some 500 of the country’s foremost economists have signed a letter urging politicians to fully legalize marijuana. Marijuana today is estimated to be the largest cash crop by far in the US. It seems the so-called war on drugs is to coin a phrase, ‘a bust’. All that time and money wasted for DEA officers and a helicopter flying over head and still it’s the Americas largest cash crop. Now that’s what I call a real pork project. Americans may have spent as much a $110 billion on it last year, yet the states and the federal government didn’t see any of it. This is because this cash was not spent on medical marijuana but on the illegal variety. It’s funny when you think about all the wasted money they have spent on trying to stamp out this little innocuous plant. Now after all their efforts to kill it off, it may be their saving grace.