In honor of 420, I'm sharing this slightly old, but nevertheless hilarious and intelligent piece of writing about why we should legalize marijuana.

If you were wondering how we were going to go about fixing this recessive economy, Harvard economist Jeffrey A. Miron has the answer. He estimates that if the nation, all 50 states of us, were to toke up and legalize marijuana together we could generate up to 8.7 billion dollar bills in revenue from taxes. The best part is that number doesn't even factor in the amount of money we would save in law enforcement from not busting the 16 year old buying a baggie from the sketchy guy in the Walgreens parking lot.

Considering that in 2003 Massachusetts spent more money on prisons than education, and that California spends "$216,00 per year on each juvenile detainee and just $8,000 on each child in the trouble Oakland public school system" it's really no surprise that so many children are getting into drugs. Clearly you are more valued by your government if you cut class and smoke a joint then if you stay and learn the pythagorean theorem.

Obviously we have some problems with how we are going about fighting against drugs. I'm not saying we should let our high schoolers get into crack, but I think we'd all be a lot happier if we didn't have to buy from the sketchy guy in the Walgreens parking lot and could instead go to a nice smoke shop and buy from the dreadlocked hippie behind the counter.

The way I see it, legalizing marijuana will boost the economy in two ways. First we can create jobs. Some farming opportunities to grow it and business opportunities to sell it. Second we can generate plenty of tax revenue from the stoners buying it. I'm sure Charlie Sheen would call this a winning situation, oh wait, he's sober.