Can Californians help dig themselves out of their historic fiscal crisis by getting high?
www.salon.com/news/featur...e_marijuana/

Zogby poll: 52% of Americans support legalization of pot

www.dosenation.com/listing.php

"Sometime in the last few months, the notion of legalizing marijuana crossed an invisible threshold. Long relegated to the margins of political discourse by the conventional wisdom, pot freedom has this year gone mainstream."

www.newsreview.com/sacramento/content

CNN: Starting on Monday we’ll be taking a close look at marijuana and its use in the United States.

ac360.blogs.cnn.com/2009/06/...inst-pot/

17-year-old Ian Barry, is seen in a video posted on YouTube lighting up a joint and smoking it during an assembly of 150 students Tuesday at Peninsula High School. He was arrested and suspended afterward.

www.kirotv.com/news/19673...etail.html#

According to data from a U. S. Army mental-health survey released last year, about 12 percent of soldiers in Iraq and 15 percent of those in Afghanistan reported taking antidepressants, anti-anxiety medications, or sleeping pills. Prescriptions for painkillers have also skyrocketed.

www.msnbc.msn.com/id/307482...lth_care//

In other words, thousands of American fighters armed with the latest killing technology are taking prescription drugs that the Federal Aviation Administration considers too dangerous for commercial pilots.

Weed, Booze, Cocaine and Other Old School "Medicine" Ads:

www.pharmacytechs.net/blog/ol...cine-ads

Mexico decriminalizes small-scale drug possession:

rawstory.com/blog/2009/0...g-posession/

"Prosecutors said the new law sets clear limits that keep Mexico's corruption-prone police from shaking down casual users and offers addicts free treatment to keep growing domestic drug use in check.

The new law sets out maximum "personal use" amounts for drugs, also including LSD and methamphetamine. People detained with those quantities no longer face criminal prosecution."

it's spreading like a weed:

www.nytimes.com/2009/09/15.../15pot.html

"Booted off one skittish TV station but quickly picked up by another, the low-budget “Cannabis Planet” show is televised evidence of how entrenched marijuana has become in California’s cultural firmament and a potent example of the way the pot subculture has been edging into the national mainstream."

Wow. Pot. Just like that, on its way to being legalized. Well, just like that after 50 years or so...

www.newser.com/off-the-gr...ave-us.html

So forget health care. Obama is going to be the pot president.

10 Signs the Failed Drug War Is Finally Ending:

www.alternet.org/drugrepor..._the_year/

"8) Facing an epidemic of drug-related overdose deaths and disease transmission from dirty needles, the Portugal government took a bold step in 2001 and decriminalized the personal use and possession of all drugs, including heroin and cocaine. The police were told not to arrest anyone found taking any kind of drug. In 2009, the results of Portugal's decriminalization were released, and the results were striking: Drug-related problems, including the transmission of diseases, deaths from drug overdoses and incarceration, all decreased dramatically, while drug use did not go up. Portugal's experience is instructive; it showed the world that the sky did not fall with decriminalization and took the debate from theory to practice."