The choice of casino or MJ

Some may see it as lunacy to consider the legalization of pot but at the same time most of America, including 25 states, the President, and members of Congress see it as moving forward. What is lunacy is to continue arresting teens and trying to eradicate and stop the use of something that grows freely in almost every region of the world.

Those making fun of casino and pot need to know it is not funny as both of these matters have the potential to influence the future of the CNMI’s economic outcomes. Predicting that everyone who smokes pot will eventually move to real drugs is also lunacy. People are educated about pot and drugs now and the curiosity or novelty factor for experimentation has dissipated almost completely so get educated on the phenomenon before you start creating horror stories.

The real lunacy is bringing in casinos, which we don’t have, into a society that already has a large marijuana footprint. We know the CNMI can make hundreds of millions from pot sales with virtually nothing changing in the villages and we know the casino is going to be even more detrimental to society and still won’t come close to bringing in the money that pot sales will generate. It’s an easy, common sense choice to pick MJ over casinos but our leaders won’t even give us a choice or a chance to pick!

As for the claims of pot being against federal law, FYI there have been many federal laws stricken down because they were not fair or right, so to think that the marijuana law is right just because it’s the law is the same as saying segregation was right because it was the law! So who is really being ludicrous here?

Readers and contributors really need to get educated on the economic initiative before trying to bash it in the news because I keep saying the CNMI’s marijuana initiative makes it a government operation and the CNMI will receive 93 percent more of the sales revenues than Colorado which only collects a little over 7 percent in taxes. We can save more lives by fighting the use of alcohol and tobacco than fighting against legalization of pot which makes it ludicrous to fight legalizing pot when there are clearly more dangerous and legal things that are out there killing people.

The people of the CNMI joined the American family because they wanted a high quality of life like other Americans. Well, most of America is now moving to reform their marijuana laws to end the ridiculous pot war and to generate revenues that will surely improve the quality of life for the people.

Ambrose M Bennett
Kagman, Saipan