My vote is to just legalize it

Hey dingle, I have a question for you.
Stoners, put your vaporizer down for minute. Or your bong. And your aluminum can and apple as well. I know you want to be taken seriously, but a white guy with dreadlocks just looks silly. Your hemp eyebrow ring is not helping matters either. Jesus, do you need to be stoned every waking minute? Ugh, I shouldn’t have even asked.
To you sad, clueless conservatives — turn off Bill O’ and Faux News for just 10 seconds. What? Well, use the remote. The big red button. Push it. No, the red one. Push it. Not the menu button dammit. Great. Cycle through the menu choices. Yeah, off button. Well, actually it’s called the power button but off button works too.
I’m here to ask a festering question that will get me blacklisted from every bar in town because it will seem like I’m condemning the very product I offer on a nightly basis. This column will also most likely generate a sideways glance from the very law enforcement establishment that I respect and hold in high esteem.
I think it’s high time (see what I did there?) that the United States finally legalizes marijuana.
There, I said it. Let the befuddled, half-baked and misinformed debate rage on — most likely between unwashed hippies and angry, scared white people who smell like dry cleaning and Metamucil.
Granted, those two groups are polar opposites that have very strong thoughts on the issue of legalization. I don’t really have anything in common with either of them other than I can throw a Frisbee and I think Glenn Beck is amusing too but for different reasons.
I myself have zero interest in marijuana. I was never a fan. I smoked a handful of times in my youth and that was 15 years ago. It made me feel dumber, as if that’s possible. I either stared at a wall for six hours or fell asleep and drooled on myself. Both of which I can do without the sweet leaf.
Anyone in a situation where they’re engaged in a daily struggle with people under the influence of alcohol will openly tell you they’d much rather deal with a stoner than a drunk.
Though they’d understandably never admit it, ask a police officer if he or she has a problem with a person smoking a few joints in their home. They’ll give you the same answer: possession laws are pointless and outdated yet they’re required to enforce them. They choke our legal system and keep our jails congested with nonviolent offenders.
Plus, there are zero reported cases of a marijuana related fatality. Zero. Yes, ingesting combustibles into your lungs is absolutely a poor idea but you can’t overdose on marijuana.
And please feel free to save your “gateway drug” theories for school kids. In that vein, alcohol is an even bigger gateway drug that has the ability to incapacitate and kill its users, not just make them wear ugly tie-dye shirts and embrace poor musical choices.
According to The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, approximately 75,000 people a year die from alcohol abuse. Accidents, over-ingestion, and speeding in a car with a glowering sense of immortality don’t quite protect the general public when you’re impaired. Simply by overindulging, drinking alcohol can shorten people’s lives by up to 30 years.
Here is the crux of the issue: Can someone give me a clear and concise reason why alcohol is legal, and marijuana is not? And if you can’t, where do we go from here?