PROOF That Supporting Marijuana Legalization Doesn't Mean You're a Pothead.

These days, there is a growing movement to legalize marijuana, completely visible to anyone watching the news. There is evidence in the present existence of a media debate on the issue covered on news networks. There are polls coming out these days with numbers in favor of legalization previously unheard of. Just as during the Great Depression, the government decided to seize tax revenue from the black market for booze by overturning alcohol Prohibition, perhaps now, people are making the clear connection between a far too rich and powerful murderous Mexican drug cartel largely funded by marijuana, and our far too poor and struggling government pocketbook.

Barack Obama's website, whenever there is an opportunity for people to submit questions, is flooded with support for questions about the subject. His disrespectful dismissals of the questions posed by serious activists is cause for widespread anger from his internet audience, who he in a roundabout way calls potheads, regardless of his own past use of the herb. Mr. Obama had no problem with his internet audience during the campaign when we made it our own independent responsibility to spread the word about him, and support him every step of the way. Now he responds to completely legitimate questions about marijuana legalization by saying he "doesn't know what this says about [his] online audience." Well, I know what it says about him, and that is that he comes off like a hypocrite, and if he really believes this drug is so terrible that it warrants harsh imprisonment penalties, then its about time he paid his debt to society.

So why would president Obama react this way? Why would he bite the hands that lifted him to the top? Quite simply, the answer is that for far too long, anyone who supported the legalization of marijuana has been dismissed as a simplistic mind who only wants legalization so that they could be free to smoke this "drug" without fear of consequence. No amount of inarguable logic spoken by the legalization advocate would be taken seriously, no heed paid to the common sense and sensibility of the legalization platform. People seem much happier to let billions of dollars a year go directly into the hands of criminal organizations who can then turn around and fund operations dealing higher priced, harder drugs which are truly detrimental, and committing acts of violence, theft, fraud...

Well, I am getting really sick of this stigma placed on the legalization activist. So here is the debunking:

This first figure shown here can be found at http://www.whitehousedrugpolicy.gov/publications/factsht/druguse/, and it is a piece of a chart which shows past month marijuana usage in 1979 and the early 80's, by age.





Next, we have a figure from the Department of Health and Human Services. This, along with other pertinent charts can be found at http://www.oas.samhsa.gov/nsduh/2k7nsduh/2k7Results.cfm#2.2





This chart, of course shows an undeniable trend of less people having used marijuana in the past month. This chart specifically only refers to the 18-25 age group, the group most commonly using marijuana, but any other statistics you will find anywhere will also support the conclusion that marijuana usage has gone down dramatically since 1979.

So, in accordance with logic, if proponents of legalization are all a bunch of potheads, then the numbers of those favoring legalization should take a similar drop between 1979 and now. Enter CBS poll from pollingreport.com.



Wow, amazing. This doesn't seem to correlate with the other data at all. When it comes to favoring legalization if for no other reason than just to help fund our government, the numbers have gone up by over 50% since 1979.

Does this logic make sense to those who think all legalization proponents are potheads? Probably not. They've written us off every other time we've spouted logic, so why should this time be any different?