A Reasonable Proposal?

[PFlynn]

Cannabis is Schedule 1 in the United States, meaning:

(A) The drug or other substance has high potential for abuse.
(B) The drug or other substance has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States.
(C) There is a lack of accepted safety for use of the drug or other substance under medical supervision.

Do these criteria sound familiar? Sounds like alcohol and tobacco to me.

In 2001, excessive alcohol use was responsible for approximately 75,000 preventable deaths and 2.3 million years of potential life lost in the United States. Tobacco use is the leading preventable cause of death in the United States. Cigarette smoking causes an estimated 438,000 deaths, or about 1 of every 5 deaths, each year. This estimate includes approximately 38,000 deaths from secondhand smoke exposure. Yet, there has never been a recorded death attributed to marijuana use at any time in US history. In fact, all illegal drugs combined kill less than 20,000 people per year; tobacco alone kills more people each year than all of the people killed by all of the illegal drugs in the last one hundred years.

Despite these facts, marijuana remains Schedule 1, the most restrictive of all drug schedules, while alcohol and tobacco remain unscheduled, merely restricted.

My proposal? It's time for the government to take their heads out of the sand and start abiding by their own rules. Either legalize marijuana, tax it, and regulate it the same as they do tobacco and alcohol, or place alcohol and tobacco under Schedule 1 (where they rightly belong), sit back, and wait for the backlash from enraged citizens.

Prohibition is an insult. It implies that citizens are not capable of making responsible decisions about their own lives. It places a large, profitable market solely in the hands of criminals. It precludes any notion of quality control, leading to tainted, improperly manufactured, or misrepresented substances. It's time for this to stop. Legalization and education will, in the long run, prove much more beneficial to the health and well-being of this country than prohibition. As Albert Einstein said: " . . . nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced. It is an open secret that the dangerous increase of crime in this country is closely connected with [prohibition]."

Sources:
DEA, Drug Scheduling
Controlled Substances Act - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Alcohol-Attributable Deaths and Years of Potential Life Lost - United States, 2001
Tobacco-Related Mortality | OSH | CDC
Drug Facts And Statistics

[PFlynn]

Bump

[Carrie8300]

I almost lost my life to drinking. I dont mess with that stuff anymore.
I have never smoked a cig either.

I agree on that proposal.