Legal Commentary

Seattle Times Calls For Marijuana Legalization

By Jeralyn

Is the time right to legalize marijuana? Should it be legalized? The Seattle Times makes a powerful argument for legalization now and passage of Washington state's HB 1550. Can Washington succeed where California failed? An analysis of the bill is here. The Times says,

Pass HB 1550. Legalize cannabis, regulate it, tax it. It is radical, yet commonsensical.

Its reasons: The cost of marijuana prohibition: [More...]

• A cost to the people arrested and stigmatized as criminals, particularly to students who lose university scholarships because of a single conviction;

• A cost in wasted police time, wasted court time and wasted public resources in the building of jails and prisons;

• A cost in disrespect for the law and, in some U.S. cities, the corruption of police departments;

• A cost in lost civil liberties and lost privacy by such measures as the tapping of private telephones and invasion of private homes;

• A cost in the encouragement of criminal lifestyle among youth, and the consequent rise in theft, assault, intimidation, injury and murder, including multinational criminal gangs; and

• A cost in tax revenues lost by federal, state and local governments -- revenues that for this state might be on the order of $300 million a year.

It will be interesting to see how the feds react if the bill passes. Will they go to court to enjoin it? Seek to have it held unconstitutional?

Full post as published by TalkLeft on February 21, 2011 (boomark / email).