Dear President Trump: If You Want to Lower Healthcare Costs and Stem the Opiate Death Spiral, Legalize Marijuana, by Charles Hugh Smith

Let’s hope President Trump has a different take on legalizing marijuana than his Attorney General. From Charles Hugh Smith at oftwominds.com:

You say you want bold solutions that unite us: start by fully legalizing marijuana.

If there is anything the left and right, progressives and conservatives, and everyone in between can agree on, it’s ending the counter-productive, destructive “war on drugs” that has generated crime and violence, a “we’re number one in Gulags” prison complex and pushed people into harder, far more dangerous drugs (see chart of “legal” opioid deaths below).

Dear President Trump: if you’re truly serious about lowering healthcare costs and stemming the rising tide of opioid addictions and death, then fully legalize marijuana via executive order now.

The usual justifications for continuing the criminalization of marijuana have moved from threadbare to completely disconnected from reality. We’re told that marijuana is surrounded by violence–well duh–the violence is the direct consequence of Prohibition.

What happened when alcohol was prohibited? Crime and violence exploded around the production and distribution of the outlawed drug. What was peaceful when legal becomes violent when outlawed. This is so obvious, yet we have “leaders” who are blind to the dynamic.

By outlawing medical marijuana, we have pushed everyone with chronic pain into extremely addictive and increasingly deadly “legal” opiates. This is the height of insanity: outlaw natural substances with pain management potential while legalizing highly addictive and often deadly synthetic opiates.

Legalizing marijuana would eliminate the violence, lower the costs of operating the Drug war Gulag and lower healthcare costs by reducing the dependence on addictive opiates for pain management. Yes, there are circumstances that require opiates–but does it make sense to make opiates the next step above over-the-counter pain relievers?

To continue reading; Dear President Trump: If You Want to Lower Healthcare Costs and Stem the Opiate Death Spiral, Legalize Marijuana