A newspaper in West Virginia—The Charleston Gazette—editorializes in favor of legalizing marijuana. It reads like a NORML press release:
Soon, State Police helicopters will swoop over West Virginia hilltops, spotting lush marijuana patches. The tall plants, worth millions in the underground dope business, will be chopped down and burned. Other clusters missed by troopers will be harvested secretly and funneled into the illicit trade. There’s another option: Pot-growing could be legalized and licensed by the state, creating legitimate jobs and a flood of state revenue… The war on drugs has raged for 40 years. Will America spend another century getting nowhere, jailing 2 million Americans per year, at horrendous cost? Or will leaders consider other options?
There’s a debate—just 19 comments old—on the newspaper’s website. Jump in. And you can send a letter to the editors by clicking here.
Not too surprising, considering that’s tobacco country. I would think that all the farming and manufacturing processes that go into cigarettes could be easily be used for the production of marijuana.
@catandbeard. for your info, WV is coal country, not tobacco. Don’t think they would mind growing pot and packaging it, though. Less rape of the land. Btw, WV is my home state, and yes we are edumacated.