Colorado Teaches America A Good Lesson About Freedom

I hope you all had at least as great a weekend as I did, we caught lots of fish and watched fireworks and spent good times with friends and family.  We even got LOTS  (12 gallons) of scallops in addition to the fish.

One of the stories that caught my eye this weekend was a story about the legalization of Marijuana in Colorado.  The story is on policy.mic it talks about two big benefits from legal marijuana sales.

First is that sales are even higher than expected with March alone generating 19 MILLION dollars in tax revenue for the state, and second is that crime rates in the state have plummeted.

By removing marijuana penalties, the state saved somewhere between $12 million and $40 million in 2012, according to the Colorado Center on Law and Policy.

Thats a huge windfall for the state and it appears that the federal government is now backing off of it’s zero tolerance policy as well.

The DEA is now asking the Food and Drug Administration to remove marijuana from its list of the most dangerous and harmful drugs. This could signal a radical shift in the way our government regulates and enforces weed. Marijuana advocates hail the decision as a necessary policy step towards eventual legalization, removing a critical roadblock that has constrained marijuana legalization on the local and federal levels. It is, of course, the first step of many.

And you can bet that other states and municipalities are watching as well

This November, it’s all but certain that D.C. will vote on a marijuana ballot measure and even pass it, setting up a battle with Congress to legalize. This could be the most important battle yet in the marijuana prohibition fight; D.C. is considered a staging ground for many local policies that get enacted throughout the country, and a victory for pot could open the floodgates elsewhere.

With that much money on the table the whores that we elect to govern us are certainly coming up with strategies to change their tunes on drug policy.

All in all this is really a win for everyone, The United States has become the country with the most incarcerated people.  That’s right “The land of the free” has more people in jail than any other country on earth, either per capita or sheer numbers and most of these people are incarcerated for non violent drug offenses with Marijuana being the single largest category. So flat out legalization not only generates tax revenue but allows states and municipalities to use those huge revenue sinks ( marijuana task forces, etc as well as the money it costs to incarcerate offenders)  for other. more productive purposes. It also frees up law enforcement manpower to pursue criminals that pose a real danger to lives and property.

The other big benefit that nobody is talking about (not in the mainstream press anyway) is that it takes the product OUT of the hands of  organized crime and gangs and puts it into the hands of licensed, law abiding citizens  and takes that money out of the black market and puts it back into the economy.

Libertarians have been saying this all along but the two major parties have been clinging tightly to the dragon that they created, in that legalization would cause an INCREASE in crime, and we need these laws so that the government can protect us…. People are starting to realize, at least in the case of Marijuana, that that particular dragon, like all dragons, is fictional, it only exists as a scare tactic.

It is a shining example of why freedom really is the best policy, even in the face of sacrificing security.  It is also a beacon of hope that maybe we can reclaim some of our freedom without having to resort to the barrel of a gun.

Thanks to my commentator who pointed this out, you made me rethink and that’s always good.

I will be back from the beach in the next couple of days.