Amongst ways that Indiana can save (LOTS OF) money, expand liberty and reverse the wrongs done to hundreds of thousands of Hoosiers is to legalize all drugs. Stores would be licensed, the items there taxed, and a big money-maker for organized crime would be gone. 1/6

Marijuana, for medical & rec’l use, now is legal in many States. Indiana, as usual, lags. Harms result from pot being illegal, not from use of the plant. 1: There are no cases of fatal cannabis poisoning in the human medical literature. World Health Org’n, 2016. 2/6

2: Pot isn’t a “gateway” drug. Joy, et al., "Marijuana and Medicine: Assessing the Science Base," Div. of Neuroscience & Behav Research, Inst of Medicine (Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1999). 3: No link est’d betw smoking pot & increases in traffic accidents. 3/6

Pot smokers tend to compensate effectively while driving via behavioral strategies. Sewell, et al, “The Effect of Cannabis Compared with Alcohol on Driving, Am J. Addict. 2009; 18(3): p. 185. If you factor in $ wasted on enforcement/imprisonment & lost fr potential taxes, keeping 4/6

pot illegal is pricey. Then there are the lives devastated by criminal histories that result from arrests & convictions. The same arguments apply to prohibition of alcohol, marijuana, and all drugs. Portugal has the broadest freedoms in Europe in regard to drugs and the fewest 5/6

problems usually associated w/drug poss’n, sale & use. I’m Mark Small: pro-choice, pro-civil rts, pro-environment, pro-legal drugs and anti-gun & anti-trump. I’m GOP candidate for Indiana House Distr 86. I approve of this blog. Hell, I wrote it. 6/6