Proposition 64

Proposition 64 would legalize marijuana for recreational use for persons over 21 years of age in California. Our Attorney General warns against the crime wave that revolves around the weed, but the idiot fails to recognize that said crime wave is the result of the weed’s illegality. A very similar crime wave revolved around alcohol during prohibition.

Reality is that legalizing marijuana is likely to reduce crime, not increase it, and the Attorney General is not as stupid as her argument would seem to indicate. She is merely as dishonest as most of the advocates on both sides of pretty much all of the measures on this year's ballot.

That being said, I do see a couple of problems with legalization, one being that after the state of Washington legalized marijuana they experienced a large increase in fatal highway crashes involving drivers who had been using marijuana, in fact the number of such crashes doubled. A direct cause and effect is hard to prove because of the second problem, which is that we have no way to detect when a person’s use of marijuana has become an impairment.

Alcohol use is generally defined as an impairment when the content in the blood reaches .08%, but even that, while close enough for legal action, is really only an approximation. Under some circumstances and for some people a blood alcohol content significantly lower than .08% can impair performance to a dangerous degree. We have nothing of a similar nature to determine safe levels of marijuana use.

Until we know more clearly what degree of impairment is caused by marijuana, when it is caused, and how to measure the effect of that impairment I think it is unwise to release it for general and unrestricted use.