While the state of Georgia continues to give people life sentences for Marijuana Possession (3 strikes and you are out insanity) California continues to try to shake off crazy policies and deal in the real world. In the real world, Marijuana is as much a reality as alcohol and that is not going to change. Crime or no crime, it has become that large of a part of American culture. California's largest cash crop, $14 billion per year, is in fact Marijuana.

California can no longer afford to spend over a billion dollars a year to convict and warehouse people whose only crime is Marijuana Possession. At the same time many in the state think the legalizing, regulating, and taxing of Marijuana could bring the state in at least a billion dollars in revenue which they need. Using money currently being spent to lock up drug offenders might better be spent to serve the mental health needs of the people who have fallen victim to drug and alcohol abuse. Though some could well argue otherwise, it is doubtful that the legalizing of marijuana would increase the number of people needing help to cure themselves of drug and alcohol dependencies.

As the state begins this debate, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced that states should be able to make their own rules on medical marijuana and that federal raids on pot dispensaries in California would cease. The move signaled a softening of the hard-line approach previous administrations have had to medicinal pot use.

And while California has this intellectual debate, the state of Georgia and other Southern States, in a total disconnect from their citizens, continues to brag about drug arrest and the number of prisoners that is going to require the building of new jails. While taxpayers complain about their taxes, they don't seem to understand the amount of those taxes that is being spent to arrest, to convict, and then to feed and shelter men and women, who accept for arcane drug laws, might be living normal lives with good jobs and quite able to pay their own way.