If You’re Pro-Freedom, You Should Be in Favor of Legalizing Marijuana Jesse Ventura - Salon
go to original July 17, 2017

Will Mexico Ever Legalize Weed? VICE INTL takes an inside look at the push to legalize weed in Mexico and spoke with one of the movement's high-profile advocates, former president Vicente Fox, who explained how weed legalization could transform crime and economics in the country. (VICE)

Check out "Jesse Ventura's Marijuana Manifesto" on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and IndieBound.

People probably think I’m a hippie because I like wearing tie-dyed shirts or because I grew up in the ’60s or because to this day one of my favorite bands is the Rolling Stones. When I was eighteen years old in 1969, I enlisted in the US Navy. I am a Vietnam veteran and hardly a hippie. I don’t drink alcohol and I’ve long since given up my vices of chewing tobacco and smoking cigars. I’m not an alcoholic, and I have nothing against drinkers, but it’s a personal preference of mine not to drink. I choose not to drink, not to use tobacco, and guess what. It happens to be healthier for you in the long run if you don’t do either of these activities. I also don’t drink coffee or caffeinated beverages. Again, personal preference. More on that later.

So have I rolled a joint and smoked it before? Yes. Absolutely. And I’ve always been up front about this.

I’ve smoked pot before - not while I was governor - but I have used it in the past in a recreational capacity. If I someday require it for medical reasons, I wouldn’t be opposed to using it. In fact, I would prefer to use it, especially if it keeps me from relying on prescription pills with all those awful side effects. My friend Tommy Chong says there shouldn’t be a distinction between medical and recreational marijuana because any way you look at it, it’s a medical plant. Instead of going to a doctor to get a prescription of Prozac or an antidepressant, those who are smoking it specifically for the euphoric feeling are doing it for mental health reasons.

I believe in marijuana’s medicinal uses because I’ve seen it significantly benefit people I know. A dear and very close member of my family, who has suffered from seizures, is now seizure-free due to medical marijuana. She takes a few drops of cannabis oil twice a day and now she’s seizure-free and off of all her medication. I’m so glad to see she’s off all those pills that had to be constantly adjusted, each with a long list of side effects that sometimes seemed like a worse trade-off from the seizures. She no longer has to take those pills because she now lives a normal life with taking just drops of cannabis oil per day. I am fully convinced of the medicinal benefits of marijuana because I’ve seen the positive effects it has had on her quality of life.

The fact is Big Pharma just can’t duplicate what this plant is capable of doing. And the fact that our government continues to deny sick people access to this plant is truly a crime against humanity. Who knows when you might need medical marijuana? How do you know what the future has in store for you? You don’t.

Every month and every year that goes by, we find out more positive things about marijuana. The list is getting longer and longer and longer to the point where I question why they kept all this information from us. Why was marijuana demonized all those years when obviously this plant has a great deal of positive attributes - not only medical. It’s also a renewable resource! That’s the part that troubles me the most.

Read the rest at Salon

Related: How Much Marijuana Do You Need to Relax? Science May Finally Have Figured It Out. (Mic)

Related: We Have Waged a War on Drugs for a Century. So, Who Won? (Alternet)

Related: Lawyer: Marijuana Prohibition Laws Unconstitutional (Associated Press)

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