RAEL’S COMMENT:
To make a plant “illegal” is to declare nature as illegal.
Last week, Gallup reported that a record-high 66 percent of Americans now say marijuana should be legal. The reason is simple: Marijuana never should have been illegal in the first place.
Through decades of reefer madness, Americans were led to believe that marijuana is far more harmful than it actually is. This is not to say it’s harmless. But it is safe to say it is less harmful than alcohol, another substance that once was illegal and is now widely accepted in our country.
Nevertheless, our federal government and many states still have laws on the books that criminalize marijuana use, and they are all too frequently enforced. U.S. law enforcement agencies made about 600,000 arrests for marijuana possession last year, according to the FBI. To make matters worse, these marijuana laws have long been disproportionately enforced against communities of color.
