ByJennifer KabbanyEditor in Chief

Marijuana was legal in the United States until 1937. But due topressure from paper companies, which helped exaggerate so-calledcrimes allegedly committed by immigrants high on pot, Congress passedthe Marijuana Tax Stamp Act — making it illegal to use, sell andcultivate.

Every 45 seconds a pot-smoker is arrested, according to nationalstatistics. That wastes $7.5 billion in taxes on something lessharmful than cigarettes and alcohol.

People who profit from selling marijuana are drug dealers. Hello?Will Congress stop picking on gun manufacturers and tobacco companiesand start investing in the economy by cultivating and sellingmarijuana for all its uses — paper, clothes, oil and recreation.

Federal oversight will eliminate

marijuana-crimes and save billions by housing only real criminalsin prison.

In 1988, the DEA’s top administrative judge concluded that”marijuana is one of the safest, therapeutically active substancesknown to man.” Thirty-five states have passed legislation allowingmedical use of marijuana.

Smoking pot alleviates symptoms of cancer, glaucoma, multiplesclerosis, AIDS and migraines. Can anyone say that about alcohol andcigarettes?

Moreover, growing and cultivating marijuana would vastly improvethe environment. Countries like China, Korea, Russia and France growhemp for fiber and paper, rather than chopping down and killingbeautiful, green trees. America should follow in their footsteps.

But, according to NORML, by “stubbornly defining all marijuanasmoking as criminal, including that which involves adults smoking inthe privacy of their own homes, (Congress is) wasting police andprosecutorial resources, clogging courts, filling costly and scarcejail and prison space, and needlessly wrecking the lives and careersof genuinely good citizens.”