When I smoke, I stick with the good stuff. Tobacco grown the world over and expertly blended in the finest English traditions. Like everyone else with the faintest hint of a pulse though I've tried marijuana a time or two, but it is not something that holds any interest for me, or that I would be excited about trying again. To my mind it's just an extremely horrible tasting, extremely harsh thing to smoke that for me produces no positive effects. That said, my personal dislike of the substance does not translate into a belief that it should remain illegal.

State Representative Mary Lou Dickerson has introduced House Bill 2401 that would fully legalize marijuana in the State of Washington, a bill that should be quickly passed in the upcoming Legislative Session for philosophical as well as practical reasons.

As free people American's should hold ownership of their bodies. This translates to an absolute right to use their bodies in whatever way they desire provided that their actions harm no one else. Certainly there is no legitimate proof that people relaxing their cares away by smoking a little marijuana harm anyone else. It's not even likely that they harm themselves seriously by doing so.

The last three Presidents of The United States have all admitted to smoking marijuana, have all personally violated the laws against doing so. Laws which are broken by the vast majority of citizens, up to and including the President of our nation are by that very fact demonstrated to be invalid laws and it is immoral for people who violate a law themselves to enforce that law against others.

Respect for the law can only be maintained if laws are minimal, fair, and consistently enforced. Laws prohibiting the use of marijuana are none of these things.

Lastly the State of Washington is in the middle of a financial crisis. A crisis that should be solved by serious cuts to the State's operating budget. The majority though will not take that approach, instead they will insist upon new and higher taxes. The legalization of marijuana would result in tax revenue to the State from sales of the substance, a benefit that should appeal to majority Democrats. Likewise legalization would save law enforcement and corrections resources, which should appeal to minority Republicans who seek to make government smaller.

Legislators can certainly be odd. Surely, just as with the population at large, the vast majority of them have used marijuana, and I must believe that the majority of them also believe marijuana prohibition to be wrong. The passage of this bill will though be extremely difficult because in their distorted perspective most legislators believe that their constituents would see them as 'soft on crime' if they were to legalize marijuana. Clearly those who believe this are incorrect, their constituents are instead laughing at their quaint insistence that the substance remain prohibited.