AS YOU SOW, SO SHALL YOU REAP (2)

The California medical marijuana law has been perverted to the extend that there are now thousands of pot pharmacies and marijuana clubs throughout the state. Every Tom, Dick, Harry, Mary and Jane has come up with an affliction for which physicians are prescribing marijuana. Thousands of pot dealers and growers have become multi-millionaires in the medical marijuana business.

The Californians who thought they were being compassionate by voting for the use of marijuana to alleviate the suffering of glaucoma, cancer and AIDS patients got scammed. California doctors are now advertising that they will prescribe marijuana for “medical problems.” Those can include anxiety, insomnia, discomfort from Botox injections or breast implants, heartburn, sunburn, razorburn, or you name it. In effect, the medical marijuana laws have legalized pot for anyone who wants to light up a joint.

The perversion of the medical marijuana laws reminds me of what happened with peyote. In 1970, the state of Texas legalized peyote for use in religious ceremonies by members of the Native American Church and a federal law confirming this protection was enacted in 1995. Guess what? Between 1970 and 1995 there was a ten-fold increase in the number of Americans claiming to be of Indian descent.

Now conservative columnist Kathleen Parker is advocating the decriminalization - a euphemism for legalization - of marijuana. When she protests that the war on drugs has criminalized otherwise law-abiding citizens, she is saying that illegal drug users are no different than those otherwise law-abiding citizens who exceed the speed limit, run stop signs and violate other traffic laws.

The fight for legalization no longer pits just liberals against conservatives. It has now become a generational divide. The Woodstockers are now in charge and many of that generation, Democrats and Republicans alike, do not see marijuana as a dangerous drug.

If pot were to be legalized, it would open up the floodgates to the use not only of marijuana, but to other drugs - coke, meth, opiates - as well. That is because marijuana has always been and continues to be "the gateway drug." So when Parker talks about criminals being empowered by the war on drugs, what do you think the legalization of marijuana will do for the drug cartels?