Recently I watched the high-spirited and hilarious British film, Saving Grace. It tells the story of a Cornwall widow who faces losing her beautiful estate after her indebted husband commits suicide. Her pot-addicted handyman convinces her that the solution is to use her renowned green thumb not to raise exotic flowers to enter into local shows but to cultivate cash generating marijuana plants.

Only a few people get high in Saving Grace before the pot crop goes up in flames, but cash-starved California’s Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger might query whether such an ending was right in the real world. He believes that legalizing one of the U.S.’s largest cash crops for tax revenue for the Golden State and the rest of the country needs a fresh look.

In a poll reported on in February of this year, fifty-eight percent of respondents living on the west coast believed that cannabis should be “taxed and legally regulated like alcohol and cigarettes”. In response to the poll, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws Executive Director said, “Public support for replacing the illicit marijuana market with a legally regulated, controlled market similar to alcohol, complete with age restrictions and quality controls, continues to grow, and appears to have achieved majority support on the west coast – where many voters are already familiar with the state-licensed use and, in some cases, sale of medical cannabis.”

While the debate on marijuana use and lost revenue picks up steam yet again, border agents in Arizona expect to seize about 800,000 pound of marijuana with a street value of $1 billion this year. According to reports by National Public Radio, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration estimates this amount to be about 20 percent of what is brought across the Mexican border. Stopping the flow is complicated by the assistance given to drug smugglers by Indians belonging to the Tohono O’odham Indian Nation, which has land on both sides the U.S.-Mexico border. As reported by NPR, one tribal leader noted “You wave five grand in somebody’s face and say, ‘All I want you to do is drive this vehicle from this point to this point, and here’s $5,000 to do it.’ “

Tribal leaders want more money for border patrols and other law enforcement. Governor Schwarzenegger just wants more money before his state’s economy – one of the world’s largest – collapses. What do you think?

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/rachel_ray/blog/2009/05/22/can_marijuana_keep_california_from_going_under_

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