As we embark on the new year, consider this; Last year, 700,000 Americans were arrested on Marijuana charges. This marks an 800% increase since 1980 - 800%. Think about that. America, a country that represents 4% of the worlds population incarcerates 25% of its citizens, making it the highest percentage of imprisoned people in the world. Most American citizens are blithely unaware of this statistic. Most of those charges are drug related.

While our nation belabors under a mounting financial crisis bordering on recession, billions of dollars are poured out each year on the 'war against drugs', a war that has no specific enemy and one where the lines become completely misaligned. Arguments are made that drug addiction is a disease, yet it remains the only disease for which its victims are criminalized for their sickness. Drugs are touted to be the enemy, which makes each and every casual user a terrorist. The time has come where reform must be demanded. We can no longer afford not to be involved.

This is not to say that advocation for the support of hard drugs, or even marijuana is needful. It is rather to undo the the billions of dollars that are spent annually on incarcerating our own people - the majority of which are tax-paying, law-abiding citizens in every way. The average marijuana user, as most in my age demographic will attest, is neither an impoverished criminal languishing glassy-eyed in a ghetto nor a hardcore felon with a crowbar waiting to break intoyour home. The average potsmoker is instead a law-abiding, tax-paying middle class American with a steady income, two cars and 2.5 children. A functional and contributing member of society who harms no other in the choice that he makes. To imprison then the core of our scciety based on a choice that is statistically safer than alcohol or tobacco is not simply abhorrent,its reprehensible.

Every argument that has ever been made to date against the use of marijuana as a recreational drug has been disproved. Every study that has been conducted independently to determine the potential promise of marijuana for medicinal purposes has shown promising and impressive result. Marijuana has never killed a single user. It has proven a Godsend for the terminally ill restoring their appetite and sense of well being where everything else failed. Yet because this legislative mad cow contributes so much ongoing and endless capital towards wasteful government expenditure, there is not only a lack of expediency from our government to remand this injust and endless 'War on Drugs', there is a decided continuation of blatant lies and propaganda despite a worldwide verifiable proof that refutes each and every one of the governments biased claims against decriminalization. This is quite probably the greatest injustice of all.

Focusing efforts on marijuana as crime reduces efforts that could be spent on dangerous and truly violent criminals and crimes against children. Every cell that is inhabited by one pot smoker represents a cell that could be housing a more violent and societally dangerous criminal. Are you exhausted with the violence of our society and the overwhelming amount of criminals never prosecuted or allowed to go free? Decriminalize Marijuana and focus our efforts on the areas that are truly a danger to our collective liberty and well being. I would far rather have a potsmoker free than a pedophile. I would far rather loose the resources spent on drug busts to focus them on murderers and thieves where they belong. It's that simple.

Consider every COPS episode you've ever seen. Is there even one that does not feature drug searches as opposed to capturing a rapist or mugger? Rather, the police are only too eager to pull over drivers and weed through their personal property in hopes that they can find something with which to make an arrest. Far better would it be to witness America's finest doing what they truly are called to do - serving and protecting . Hempheads are not my enemy. Enough is enough.

Consider that the Bush Administration recently spent an unprecedented multi-million dollar ad campaign on PSA's alleging that recreational drug users were supporting terrorism. Your taxpayer dollars funded this initative of information and propaganda. If there is to be blame for the ability to fund terrorists with drug money, then it falls directly at the hands of the government in the policies that it enacts by making drugs illegal in the first place. Much like prohibition, the laws against the substance are the things responsible for creating the crime in the first place.

Drug Czar John Walters recently traveled to Northern California to oversee police efforts to eradicate medical marijuana being grown on private lands. A victimless crime. According to a report in the July 13 edition of the Redding Record Searchlight newspaper, US Drug Czar John Walters proclaimed, "[T]he people who plant and tend [these marijuana] gardens are >terrorists< who wouldn't hesitate to help other terrorists get into the country with the aim of causing mass casualties."

It is not as if the government has not already been advised by its own commissions as regards the ridiculousness of criminalization, either. The National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse, chaired by former Pennsylvania Governor Raymond P. Shafer recommended that congress amend federal law so that possession and use of pot would no longer be considered a criminal offense and advised that state legislators followed suit.

“[T]he criminal law is too harsh a tool to apply to personal possession even in the effort to discourage use,” concluded the Commission. “It implies an overwhelming indictment of the behavior which we believe is not appropriate. The actual and potential harm of use of the drug is not great enough to justify intrusion by the criminal law into private behavior, a step which our society takes only with the greatest reluctance.

“… Therefore, the Commission recommends ... [that the] possession of marijuana for personal use no longer be an offense, [and that the] casual distribution of small amounts of marihuana for no remuneration, or insignificant remuneration, no longer be an offense.”

So why then has nothing been done?

That was thirty-five years ago. The report was shelved by President Nixon, and the war continues on.

It is now 14 minutes past midnight on January 1st, 2008. The total we have spent so far in this fourteen minutes to fight a war we can never possibly hope to win?

$140,277,074.

Happy New Year.