Lighting Up Legally In Mexico

MEXICO, with a newly elected liberal legislature and head of state, is considering legalizing marijuana, which, in a sense, would change the personal habits of the average Mexican very little, since those in mexico who wish to smoke marijuana already do so with impunity, as they do and long have in the United States. And because many American states are legalizing it, the profit from drug smuggling pot is diminishing, rapidly. The logic is simple; decriminalize activities from which organized criminals derive profit, shift the production, distribution, and profit seeking from the criminal to the legal sector, and, magically, legitimate business people now earn the profit, and the decent living, without fear of black market competition. In the United States, we the people experienced this process in the alcohol industry, the only surprise being the length of time it took American law makers to come to an understanding of basic economic reality and human nature. Prohibition of alcohol existed in the U.S. between 1919 ans 1933, during which time organized crime was rampant, and the sale and profit of alcohol was exclusively the domain of criminals, by legal definition. marijuana was criminalized in 1935, at the behest of the newly legal alcohol industry, and the consequences of this horrible law has been evident for generations. Tens of thousands of good people have gone to prison in the U.S. for the fabricated crime of growing, selling, or smoking marijuana, and most of the incarcerated have been and still are African-Americans, proof of the racism deeply embedded in american legal and criminal justice institutions. Abraham Lincoln best expressed the insanity of prohibiting people from enjoying hedonistic pleasures: "prohibition goes beyond the bounds of reasons, in that it attempts to control a man's appetites by legislation, and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. Prohibition goes against the very principles upon which the United States was founded". Lincoln was referring to drinking, gambling, and prostitution, of which he refrained from the first two, but indulged often in the third, as a young, libidinous man in Springfield, Illinois. The United States is essentially a progressive country, surveys consistently indicate. Marijuana is already being legalized, at long last, and gay and transgender people are gaining legal status, after long being treated like criminals, pariahs, and sinners, further demonstrating America's fundamentally progressive nature. The traditional Christian belief that whatever yields sensual gratification is sin is being relegated to history, thank the lord, as more people come to their progressive sense, and leave stagnant conservative views in the dust.