Legalization would reduce teen pot smoking

Someone I used to know who grew up in Mississippi, and was a teenager when the state finally ended alcohol prohibition in 1966, said that during prohibition, "if you could reach the bar and lay your money down, you were old enough to drink." Since it was illegal to sell alcohol to anyone, bootleggers didn't care how old their customers were - and neither do drug dealers today. Once alcohol was legalized and regulated, bars and taverns stood to lose their licenses if they sold to minors. Suddenly, children couldn't buy alcohol anymore. The same thing would undoubtedly happen if pot were legal.

As long as marijuana is a black-market commodity, it will remain out of control. Legalizing and regulating cannabis is the key to curbing teen use.

Earth Day thoughts

Today is Earth Day, the day when we're all supposed to think about the environment and how to keep the planet safe for life. Cannabis can do a lot in that regard. 

Industrial hemp is extremely environmentally friendly. It grows, like, pardon the expression, a weed. Just sow the seeds and you get a tremendous yield per acre. No fertilizers required. Rarely if ever do you need to water it or tend it. It grows fast, and its fibers run the entire length of the plant - which makes it very sturdy. It's a renewable, sustainable alternative to leather and wool (both of which require care and feeding of animals), cotton (which is labor and/or energy intensive to harvest and process, and doesn't hold up nearly as well as hemp), and synthetic fibers (which require petroleum and are not biodegradable). Hempcrete is lightweight, durable, and has a high R factor built in. 

Medical cannabis is more efficiently produced than the many, much more dangerous and more expensive, prescription drugs it can supplent - and being compleely biodegradable, it does not contribute to the growing problem of discarded drugs in the water supply.

Social/recreational marijuana, besides being safer than alcohol, takes much less energy to produce than beer, wine, or liquor. Again, you just plant it and let it grow. No roasting, malting, fermentaion, distillation or bottling required.

In short, pot and industrial hemp are god for the economy, good for the environment, and much better for the consumer than the legal alternatives available today.