Hey bud, let's party (and collect lots of tax revenue)

Say what you will about habitual marijuana smokers. They're no better and probably no worse than an equivalent number of sloppy drunks.

There's nothing pretty or noble about smoking so much pot that you can't move off the couch, or drinking oneself to a failing liver.

The significant effort expended in government resources on keeping marijuana illegal and therefore somewhat harder to obtain than alcohol simply cannot be justified.

I don't doubt that more people would smoke marijuana if it were legal, but what we're doing now isn't working.

We're not going to ban the sale and consumption of alcoholic beverages anytime soon. Prohibition didn't work. Now it's time to throw up our collective hands when it comes to anti-marijuana laws, stop the charade that is "medical marijuana" (aka quasi-legal cannabis sale to just about anybody with even a little motivation to obtain a prescription) and just out-and-out make pot legal, regulate its growth and sale — and tax the hell out of it.

The economic benefit to the state with marijuana as both a cash crop and tax boon is too large to ignore in these troubled times.

Let individuals decide whether or not they wish to indulge in alcohol or marijuana. Use a portion of the resultant tax revenue to fund education on the perils of these drugs' abuse and on treatment of the resultant addictions.

The average stoner can barely put together a sentence, let alone perpetrate a violent crime, so let's get real and get out of this futile front on the failing war on drugs.