Isn't it time common sense prevailed and we stop persecuting and prosecuting people over a plant?

Washington, DC -Speaking at a recent meeting of the American News Women’s Club, Washington D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier embraced the city’s new marijuana legalization policy. She then made some surprisingly genuine comments about the new law. In her speech, she said that most marijuana users are non-violent people who just want to relax, and that marijuana prohibition has worked to deepen the divide between the community and the police…. “Marijuana smokers are not going to attack and kill a cop. They just want to get a bag of chips and relax. Alcohol is a much bigger problem. It is not healthy, but I’m not policing the city as a mom, I’m policing it as the police chief—and 70 percent of the public supported this,” Lanier said…. “All those arrests do is make people hate us,” she added.

It’s still comparatively rare to hear law enforcement officials using the language of common sense when it comes to marijuana. Far too common is the over-the-top silliness displayed by Carson City Sheriff Kenneth Furlong, who’s said that methamphetamine and heroin aren’t the problem, it’s marijuana that makes people violent?

Dude…WTF??? Have you ever even been around people who are stoned? The only violence on the mind of a stoner is how much force it will take to open the family-size bag of Doritos he’s wrestling with. All most marijuana smokers want to do is relax, which is the point Chief Lanier made…and she’s right. Stoners don’t riot, they’re rarely able to muster the resolve to do harm to anyone but themselves, and they’re generally pretty mellow. Anyone who’s spent any time at all around stoners know that they’re generally pretty docile and agreeable. Handle them a bag of Cheese Puffs and they’re good to go.

Meth and heroin aren’t the problem? In whose fantasy world is that true? And how is it that a man can get a life sentence for selling $20 worth of marijuana? When does common sense prevail? And when do we being to address the things that really DO pose a problem?

Lanier isn’t a drug warrior, unlike Furlong, who, for whatever reason has decided that marijuana is of the Devil. Never mind the lives destroyed by alcohol, meth, and heroin- marijuana’s what really turns people into crazed, violent psychopaths…except when it doesn’t, which is pretty much all the time.

Methinks perhaps someone’s been watching “Reefer Madness” on an endless loop again.