The benefits and non-disaster of legal marijuana

On the way home from work this afternoon I heard the story on NPR of the Attorneys General of the States of Oklahoma and Nebraska filing a lawsuit against Colorado challenging that state’s legalization of marijuana.  It seems that the plaintiff state’s AGs have high hopes of US Supreme Court intervention citing the supremacy clause.  According to the report, contraband marijuana from Colorado has been heavily trafficked into the two plaintiff states causing the taxpayers of those states to bear the “cost.”  The lawsuit does not quantify what the cost is to date and much of the evidence supporting it is purely anecdotal.  Assuming the plaintiffs can make their case, and at the moment that seems like a longshot, what will become of an overwhelmingly popular law passed by the voters of Colorado?  Nobody can make the case that legal marijuana will cause a downward spiral into chaos and crime as year-to-date in Denver violent crime is trending down or at least not significantly increased.  Nobody can make the case that recreational marijuana does not provide a sound tax revenue base.  Nobody can make the case that legal marijuana helps foreign drug cartels that heretofore did brisk business smuggling their goods into the USA.

Suffice to say the usual arguments against recreational marijuana are not on the side of the plaintiffs in this grandstand move.  It seems the “cost” of criminalizing recreational pot is not serving the taxpayers.  Perhaps by retiring the failed War on Drugs and redirecting the money wasted on it to fight real crime like domestic abuse, identity theft, credit card fraud and a litany of other real crimes that do real people real harm we could modernized our nation and regain our edge as an evolved society.  I realize it is but a pipe dream (no pun intended) but the State of Oklahoma could do much better for all its citizens by embracing Colorado’s enlightenment on the issue of marijuana.  Sadly, I don’t see that happening soon if ever but hey, we can always dream and take solace in the fact we have the infrastructure and retail wherewithal to support such a policy!