Outside the War on Drugs Box

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano presented herself well on C-Span today at a senate hearing chaired by Joe Lieberman with John McCain asking pertenant questions. I woke up when Senator McCain said, "Let's think outside the box..." I was hoping someone would draw the parallel between the gangster activities of the prohibition era and today's Mexican drug cartel. As soon as alcohol became legal, crime had to look for another source of revenue and the state found a new source to tax. There are drugs too dangerous to make legal, like methamphetamines but marajuana is not one. How big a bite can we take out of the cartel's income if we legalize, regulate, and tax weed? The money garnered from weed could be used to fund enforcement of actual threats to society. Marajuana is not adictive as is tobacco, which is legal. Marajuana and any smoke in the lungs causes cancer, but because it still has the "reefer madness" lie attached to it, you can't get kids to accept the true dangers of the drug. If it were legal, it would be sold and taxed and attacked like cigaretts. Some would smoke. Smarter people would use it in salads and most would do what most sensible people do about the much more problematic drug tobacco. Legalization is the easiest and most profitable method of cutting off the demand side of the drug war. That's thinking outside the box, Senator McCain.