Get up, Stand Up... - Bob Marley

Ben Harris checks in with another Raich inspired rant but he's looking beyond medical marijuana to the crux of the legalization argument. He says in part,

Marijuana needs to be decriminalized, not just for those medical users, but for recreational users as well. ...We should not be looking at pot as a parallel to morphine, but as a parallel to alcohol and tobacco.

...All of the marijuana users that I know are recreational users. We talk about cancer patients getting hauled away for growing a few plants. That, admittedly, is a travesty. However, in the grand scheme of things, they are but a drop in the ocean of marijuana arrests. Most users and dealers arrested are not using or providing pot for medical use. That's the truth.

...It all boils down to this. If we, as individuals, as a group can make our voices heard, things will change. We are the people who work nine to five, getting overtime when we can. We, while individually pay relatively small amounts of tax, make up the tax base of this country. We cast the votes. Maybe it is time to start electing not on the value of a name and seniority, but for a person's values and integrity.

Not the head of a Fortune 500 company, whose first thought is money; but the president of a company who employs thirty people. Who does right by his people and his customers, because his personal integrity is on the line. We, as citizens, are those customers. We should expect more, and in many ways, less of our government.

A good point and one I try to make often myself. If you want change, you have to participate in the process and make them yourself. Change can only bubble up from below because those in power, profit too much from the prohibition to allow to lapse. As Ben ends his email, "It comes down the common man, as it usually does in the end."