Legalization up in smoke

Voters fell for the hype that legalizing pot would defund the criminals and fund the state. All we’ve done is provide those “defunded” criminals with a cheaper, legal supply of pot they can sell to a growing customer base of underage teens who reason that, since pot isn’t one of those “bad, illegal” drugs, maybe it’s worth a try.

And when the 20 percent to 30 percent of those users that statistics tell us will start trying stronger stuff, where will they go to find that stronger stuff?

And all that extra money into the state budget …

Voters fell for the hype that legalizing pot would defund the criminals and fund the state. All we’ve done is provide those “defunded” criminals with a cheaper, legal supply of pot they can sell to a growing customer base of underage teens who reason that, since pot isn’t one of those “bad, illegal” drugs, maybe it’s worth a try.

And when the 20 percent to 30 percent of those users that statistics tell us will start trying stronger stuff, where will they go to find that stronger stuff?

And all that extra money into the state budget? Well a lot of it is going to disappear in the lawsuits from the federal government, and the states and Canadian provinces around us who get tired of the bales of legally grown Washington pot that keep ending up inside their borders.

Oh, and all those police who were going to be freed up to focus on violent, “real” crimes? Yeah, they’re still going to be working overtime trying to find out which of the legal growers and sellers are still supplying that defunded black market and its in-state teenage customers and its out-of-state smuggling operations.

Michael Liljenberg

Spokane Valley