This is from a brilliant op-ed by the dean of the California State University system:

(SF Gate) During the budget debate, it became clear to me that something unthinkable has happened in California: Our fiscal meltdown has so distorted our legislative priorities that we are now a state that places a higher priority on prison than on higher education.

Last week, at the same time that the California State University’s Board of Trustees was approving drastic measures to manage unprecedented budget cuts, a tentative budget deal in the Legislature was unraveling because of outrage over cuts to California’s prison budget. How could the message to California students have been any clearer? You can cut higher education to the bone and you won’t hear a single statement of remorse from the Legislature, but start cutting into the prison budget and you’ll hear howls of protest from the Capitol.

It costs $49,000 per year to keep a prisoner behind bars in California. However, the state’s contribution per student at the CSU is just $4,600. This dichotomy is not just outrageous, it’s tragic. For such a relatively small amount of money, a young person could get a good education, secure a meaningful job and become a contributing member to the community and the economy. But instead of preserving this small investment in our young people, our leaders would rather spend 10 times as much to keep prisoners behind bars.

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A commenter named Christopher on the NORML Blog had this to mention about my previous Who Are You? post:

I would like to know the percentage of smokers, from those charts, that are successful. The biggest argument I hear is that Marijuana makes you lazy and unable to do real work. So what percentage of average smokers are bums and what percentage are productive members of society?

Ask and ye shall receive.  According to the Quick Tables at SAMHDA based on results from the 2007 National Surveys on Drug Use and Health, people who have smoked pot are better educated and work harder than people who never have smoked pot.

Now it’s likely the employment data have changed since 2007, but at first glance, it appears that the majority of people employed full-time and the majority of the unemployed have smoked marijuana.  The 43.5% figure for the part time workers makes sense, if you figure that more low-skilled, part-time positions are likely to face a drug test.

Employment Status of American Adults

Based on the responses, about two-thirds (67.8%) of all American adults are employed part-time or full-time, and the unemployed account for 3.2% of all adults (remember, 2007 figures, plus these numbers will vary from official unemployment statistics because some of those “others” would be counted as unemployed, but aren’t in this survey.)

Employment Status of American Adults Who Have Ever Used Marijuana

But when you break these numbers down for only those American adults who have used marijuana, we find that over three-quarters (78.3%) of all marijuana users are employed part-time or full-time.  To be fair, a larger proportion (4% vs. 3.2%) of marijuana users are unemployed than the proportion for all adults, but not so much as to be statistically significant.

Frequency of Marijuana Use by Full-Time Employed Adults who Used Marijuana at least Once per Year

There are 12.9 million American Adults, out of the 22 million total who have smoked at least once a year, who are employed full time.  When we break down their use by frequency, we find the largest proportion, well over a third (36%) of full-time employed marijuana smokers are using more than 100 days per year.  That’s 4.7 million full-time employed chronic marijuana users – and they can’t all be snowboarders, rappers, and head shop owners.

Educational Attainment vs. Marijuana Usage

Finally, almost half of American Adults who have one year or more of college education have smoked marijuana, while among those with only a high school diploma / GED or less educational attainment, about one-third have smoked marijuana.  I’m not saying that smoking marijuana will make you smarter, but it seems the smarter you are, the more likely you’ll smoke marijuana.

So there you have it.  The “average” pot smoker, if there is such a thing, is a white, college educated, full-time employed male under the age of fifty.  In other words… ME! 

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Bartow, Florida — The Polk County Sheriff’s Office says two teachers have been arrested for possession of pot in their home.

Arrested are Bradley Goldsmith, 25, and Jessica Murray, 26, both of Loma Vista Court in Davenport. They are teachers at the Donald E. Woods Alternative School. Also charged is Jessica’s boyfriend, Jason West, 26.

According to deputies, all three admitted to smoking marijuana socially at Goldsmith’s home. They were taken to the county jail at Bartow on charges of possession of marijuana and drug paraphernalia, and maintaining a dwelling for drug use.

Deputies say a search of the home produced one large bong, five glass pipes, one cannabis grinder and marijuana. Jail records indicate the marijuana was less than 20 grams.

“It’s troubling when teachers — who should be role models for our children — are smoking marijuana, therefore setting a bad example,” says Sheriff Grady Judd. “The criminal charges may be minor, but the loss of trust is great.”

via Teachers jailed for smoking pot at home | 10connects.com | Tampa, St. Petersburg, Clearwater.

Let me see if I’ve gotten this straight.  You just busted two teachers (and a boyfriend) who teach at an alternative school for smoking pot at home.  They never brought the pot to the school or used it at the school.  Among the three of them, they had less than 7 grams each, less than a quarter ounce.  Even in Florida, that’s still a misdemeanor, but it may lead to their firing.  So now there will be two classrooms full of special-needs kids making do with substitute teachers, or perhaps their already-too-large classes are folded into some other already-too-large classes.

Read the rest of this entry by clicking here

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“You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court’s decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, at first glance it may seem rather paradoxical for us consciously to break laws. One may well ask: “How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?” The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that “an unjust law is no law at all.”

Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust.”

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Letter from a Birmingham Jail
April 16, 1963

Today our nation honors what would’ve been this week the eightieth birthday of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., on the eve of the inauguration of Barack Hussein Obama as the 44th president of these United States.  I was sixty-four days old when an assassin’s bullet cut down Dr. King in the prime of his life.  Today I am six-hundred forty days older than Dr. King when he was killed.  Tomorrow I will see something few people my age and older thought we’d ever see, yet something Dr. King had dreamed from the start.

There remains a grave injustice to be battled, the most unjust of laws to be disobeyed, a law that by its definition is not rooted in eternal law and natural law: the man made code that declares nature itself to be illegal, the prohibition on cannabis.  Yet when I mention marijuana law reform in the context of the great civil rights struggles in America, so many are quick to dismiss me with snickers of derision.  ”You just want pot legal so you can get high!” is a common refrain.

Read the rest of this entry by clicking here

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Marijuana Use and High School Dropout: The Influence of Unobservables
In this study we reconsider the relationship between heavy and persistent marijuana use and high school dropout status using a unique prospective panel study of over 4500 7th grade students from South Dakota who are followed up through high school.

…We find a positive association between marijuana use and dropping out (OR=5.68), over half of which can be explained by prior differences in observational characteristics and behaviors. The remaining association (OR=2.31) is made statistically insignificant when measures of cigarette smoking are included in the analysis. Because no physiological justification can be provided for why cigarette smoking would reduce the cognitive effects of marijuana on schooling, we interpret this as evidence that the association is due to other factors. We then use the rich data to explore which constructs are driving this result, determining that it is time-varying parental and peer influences.

In other words, heavy persistent marijuana use is not a reliable indicator of whether a student will eventually drop out of school, but instead that parents and peers have more impact on whether a kid stays in school.

Bet you won’t see this study plastered all over the Washington Post, USA Today, New York Times, CNN, FOX, etc…  But if it showed the opposite – that pot smoking led to drop-outs – it would’ve been front-page news.

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