Legalize Mary Jane....please!

For my entire life, I've always accepted that the left-handed cigarette is a very bad thing, and the use of it should be punished accordingly. But....why?

Marijuana is a "gateway drug", some may say in counter. Well, not to be cute, what is a "gateway drug?" Webster's defines it as "any mood-altering drug, as a stimulant or tranquilizer, that does not cause physical dependence but may lead to the use of addictive drugs." Well, doesn't alcohol fit squarely under this definition? Of course it does, for you'd be hard pressed to find one user of cocaine, heroin, etc who was not at one point and time (previous to their serious drug addiction) a user of alcohol. Therefore, I either (1) don't buy the gateway drug theory, or (2) think the gateway drug theory is conveniently not applied to alcohol due to arbitrary social norms.

So, why punish the use of marijuana? Rare is the event when people get high as a kite and go kick the ever living canibus out of some poor, unsuspecting fool. Conversely, rare is the night where some fratstar at Bogies doesn't prove his manhood by hurling a jager-bomb induced right hook onto the chin of some guy who snaked his date at a band party freshman year....so he thinks, at least.

Additionally, while I make no claims at being an economist, I am a self-proclaimed logician: by punishing marijuana, we create and perpetuate the market for dope dealers everywhere. It's simple -- when your service to society is to provide something illegal, you can jack up your prices to make a healthy living. If we legalized marijuana we would not only eradicate this "problem," but we would also bolster our own economy by acquiring tax derivatives.

And for you Scaliaites who would say our founding fathers would roll over in their graves at the thought of this (which fits squarely under the right of privacy guaranteed in the penumbral right emanated by the 1st, 2nd, 4th, 5th, 9th and 14th amendments; also, see Griswold v. Connecticut, Bowers v. Hardwick, and Lawrence v. Texas) puff on this....