The Solution at Hand

Right, so here's the thing. For a number of years now California's prisons have been one of the state's few growth industries. The prison population has reached obscene proportions; neglect and abuse of the prisoners is common. It's a disgrace and a scandal.

Now, a federal judge has ruled that CA ought to reduce its 170,000-inmate population by about 40,000 over the next few years.

So here's my plan: the prisons let go all the people in there for nonviolent crimes. Then the state should encourage them to grow either pot or industrial-grade hemp. It could even rent the land and hold classes on how to do it.

Then the state could slap, say, a ten-dollar-an-ounce tax on commercial-grade marijuana and so much money per pound on hemp. If the DEA came sniffing around the California people could take them to lunch or something.

This would accomplish a number of things:

*The California prison population would be halved, and the days of using incarceration as a growth industry in the state would be ended;

*California's budget deficit problems would soon be over;

*Thousands of semi-unemployable people in a non-existent jobs market would have an honest living;

*Cotton farmers would have to either switch to hemp or go out of business. Cotton is a soil butcher and has been an ecological disaster for California because it's water intensive.

*Everybody would be great happiness. The liking life would occur. Cleanness would be floating around.
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