“That is wrong and pure leftist propaganda. It is a lie!”
PROVE IT!!!
I have lived through it since I was a young person and am still living through it currently. This place (Washington) looked the other way when it came to marijuana for the last 50 years. I did not support legalization for recreational purposes, but did not see how it would make much of a difference considering the level of consumption we already had. I was wrong... legalization of marijuana for recreational purposes caused usage to sky rocket to the point where legal marijuana currently has sales that exceed both alcohol and tobacco combined.
When our governor started our Covid lock-down 8 months ago... Most people's jobs were declared “nonessential” including most construction workers, most retail workers, most restaurant workers, most vehicle sales workers, and most of nearly every other profession. But anyone connected to the marijuana trade was declared to be “essential” immediately.
Why? The over $400,000,000 and exponentially growing taxes the State is currently collecting was one reason, but the state has also created a staggering number of new potheads. Many of these people keep themselves “high” all the time. How do I know? I have friends and family who fall into this category, and up until I retired I responded to potheads every day that I went to work. These are people with far more health and psych problems than others. The $400 million the state collects in taxes is a fools errand because the amount of money that the public spends catering to this addled bunch is far in excess of the whatever is collected. The funds are merely shifted around but the loss represented by these wasted lives and the breakdown in our society is incalculable.
Now Stickman we have conversed previously and I know that you have had personal struggles that you feel marijuana has alleviated. And I know many others including friends who moved to Florida in the last few years who have used marijuana as a “treatment” for both physical and psychological problems. My friends, like me and you and most others on this forum are older people and if it is giving them comfort in their “golden” years... and they manage to keep their addiction under control and are not driving around endangering others... more power to them.
Ironically, everyone that I know personally who uses marijuana for "medical purposes" had a long history of "recreational use" in the decades before it became the magical elixer for all that currently ails them. And given marijuana's known connection to both physical and psycological problems... one sometimes wonders if the ailments they are treating were not caused by the cure.
But this does not excuse the blight and huge cost for society that legalizing marijuana for recreational purposes causes everywhere that it is tried.