I thought I had the answer to California's budget crisis...

...but apparently I'm behind the curve. Last Friday Time magazine ran an article which began:

Could marijuana be the answer to the economic misery facing California? Democratic state assemblyman Tom Ammiano thinks so. Ammiano introduced legislation last month that would legalize pot and allow the state to regulate and tax its sale — a move that could mean billions of dollars for the cash-strapped state. Pot is, after all, California's biggest cash crop, responsible for $14 billion a year in sales, dwarfing the state's second largest agricultural commodity — milk and cream — which brings in $7.3 billion a year, according to the most recent USDA statistics. The state's tax collectors estimate the bill would bring in about $1.3 billion a year in much needed revenue, offsetting some of the billions of dollars in service cuts and spending reductions outlined in the recently approved state budget.

The article doesn't even mention the potential savings from the costly War on Drugs and the effect legalizing pot would have on crime. Have you noticed what drug lords are doing to Mexico? It's worse than Chicago during the Roaring Twenties. Let's put aside all the hysteria and have a grown-up discussion about drugs in this country. How can it be, for instance, that executives making over $250,000 working for firms that take TARP funds can be taxed at 90% while all those associated with the $14 billion marijuana industry in California pay nothing? And that's just California. Is it any wonder that one of Roosevelt's first orders of business in 1933 was the repeal of Prohibition? Has anyone ever said we should revisit that decision?