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.

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! 

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.

Oh, well, you gotta have priorities.  You can’t have dedicated teachers instructing our kids without making sure they provide a fine example to the children in the privacy of their own home where none of their students will see them.  It’s much better that we spend more money on substitute teachers and hiring and training new teachers… what’s that?… we’re out of money?…

Mothers from Cutler Bay held a funeral for public education — and posted the video on YouTube.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Two others from Doral went on a weeklong hunger strike.

It may take more than that. The battle over school funding will define this legislative session the way the hunt for tax relief did last year’s.

Economists predict that the tax revenue that runs the state, generated by everything from home sales to retail goods, will be down by $3.5 billion more this spring. That money is the lifeblood of the state general fund, nearly half of which is used for education.

Unlike the federal government, the state cannot run a deficit. So, unless lawmakers raise revenue — something the Republican-dominated Legislature is actually considering, with talk of increasing the cigarette tax or eliminating corporate-tax loopholes — they have to scale back spending.

Florida ranks 47th in the nation in education spending per $1,000 of personal income, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2006 figures, the latest available.

That was before schools across the state absorbed unprecedented budget cuts. In the past two years, state lawmakers slashed $3.87 billion from the education budget — a reduction of nearly 16 percent.

The Miami-Dade County district had to reduce its budget by about $300 million in the past year — a 5.5 percent cut. In Broward County, the cuts totaled $150 million.

“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.

Marijuana law reform is a civil rights struggle.  I will not attempt to equate this struggle to those of minorities, women, or gays and lesbians; however, there are some parallels among our fight and theirs and, indeed, some threads of drug law injustice are woven directly into the struggles of these groups.  The prohibition of drugs was one of the tools of oppression – the “Negroes” for their cocaine, the “Chinamen” for their opium, and the Mexicans for their marihuana.  It remains so today – while people use drugs at about the same rate regardless of race, African-Americans and Hispanics are disproportionately arrested, convicted, and serve longer sentences for drug use than white people.

Aside from the racist nature of the origins and applications, cannabis prohibition itself is an unjust law.  First consider that it isn’t merely against the law to possess, cultivate, traffic, buy, and consume marijuana – it is against the law to be marijuana.  Federal and state law enforcement spend millions of dollars and thousands of hours flying helicopters attempting to spot cannabis growing out in the wild.  Ninety-eight percent of what is seized is known as “feral hemp”, which is wild ditchweed with unsmokably-low levels of THC.  Officials rip up and destroy every plant they see whether it is owned or tended by any human, whether or not it could possibly intoxicate any human.   Logically, then, the ultimate goal of marijuana prohibition is not to simply stop humans from using it for intoxication, but to eradicate the species cannabis sativa L. from the earth!

Think of that: our official policy is the extinction of a species of life.  Certainly that’s not entirely new.  We’re dedicated to the extinction of all manner of microscopic life, after all, but that is a justifiable policy for self-preservation – we kill bugs that kill us.  I cannot think of another plant or animal we treat like cannabis.  Deadly plants like nightshade and belladonna are legal, annoying plants like poison ivy and poison oak are legal, even intoxicating plants like coca and poppy are legal when cultivated for prescription medications.  But the cannabis plant, the plant that cannot kill you is completely illegal*.  The plant that can provide the food, clothing, shelter, and medicine humans need to survive is illegal.  Nature itself is illegal.  How much more contrary to eternal law and natural law could this unjust prohibition law be?

The fight against cannabis prohibition, against this unjust law, is a civil rights fight.  This declaration will offend some people who will point to four centuries of slavery and Jim Crow, to lynchings and cross burnings, and to beatings and firehoses and condemn my declaration as making light of the plight of those who were truly oppressed.  I do not make light of those struggles, but I also recognize that civil rights are not a zero sum game and the degree and manner in which one is being oppressed are not what make the fight against oppression a just one.  Dr. King dreamed of a day when children would be judged by not by the color of their skin but the content of their character; I dream of a day when workers are judged not by the metabolites in their urine but the quality of their work.

Later in King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail, he writes:

Let us consider a more concrete example of just and unjust laws. An unjust law is a code that a numerical or power majority group compels a minority group to obey but does not make binding on itself. This is difference made legal. By the same token, a just law is a code that a majority compels a minority to follow and that it is willing to follow itself. This is sameness made legal. …

I hope you are able to see the distinction I am trying to point out. In no sense do I advocate evading or defying the law, as would the rabid segregationist. That would lead to anarchy. One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty. I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law. …

The unjust law of marijuana prohibition is difference made legal.  The majority compels our minority to forgo our intoxicant, but does not bind itself to forgo their intoxicant.  The majority compels our minority forgo our medicine, but does not bind itself to forgo their medicine.  The majority compels our minority to forgo their religious sacrament, but does not bind itself to forgo their religious sacrament.  The majority compels our minority to forgo our source of food, fuel, and fiber, but does not bind itself to forgo their sources.

The majority may argue that they do not prohibit intoxication, medication, religious sacrament, or food, fuel, and fiber cultivation, so long as it doesn’t involve marijuana.  This to me sounds like the argument against same-sex marriage rights, that gays and lesbians are just as free to marry someone of the opposite sex as everybody else.  If we are given a right, but then proscribed from exercising that right in the manner that benefits us without a valid reason from the majority, it is not really a right.  When intoxication, medication, and sacrament are legal rights, but we are proscribed from using a demonstrably safer intoxicant, medicine, and sacrament, that is difference made legal.

No, we do not face the firehoses and the dogs and the lynchings, nor do we suffer in as great of numbers as did the African Americans Dr. King so graciously led in the years before my birth.  Our oppression is more subtle and codified into laws that restrict our housing, employment, and educational opportunities.  We do not tremble in fear of the midnight ride of white-robed vigilante Klansmen; our terror comes in the form of midnight no-knock raids of body-armored SWAT teams.

Like the civil rights struggles of the past, we work to change laws that oppress people, laws that enjoy support from the majority and are rationalized by tradition, religion, and junk science.  Unlike the civil rights struggles of the past, our constituency is an invisible group defined by lifestyle, not genetics.  That choice to use cannabis should not disqualify our fight to be treated as equals under the law.  After all, the choice to worship the God of your understanding is not genetic, it is a lifestyle choice as well, and our law recognizes that one cannot be discriminated against for that choice.  In fact, it is a bit ironic that one’s choice of God, a belief that cannot be proven by science to beneficial, is a protected right, yet one’s choice of cannabis, a plant that can be proven by science to be beneficial, is a federal crime.

The freedom to worship, of course, is an explicit right recognized by our First Amendment, but its foundation is in the inalienable rights given to us by our Creator, among them being Life, Liberty, and The Pursuit of Happiness.  If that last one – the Pursuit of Happiness – doesn’t give me the right to smoke a joint so long as I don’t affect anyone else’s Life and Liberty, then the Constitution isn’t worth the hemp paper on which it was drafted.

Also from King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail, he writes:

We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was “legal” and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was “illegal.” It was “illegal” to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler’s Germany. Even so, I am sure that, had I lived in Germany at the time, I would have aided and comforted my Jewish brothers. If today I lived in a Communist country where certain principles dear to the Christian faith are suppressed, I would openly advocate disobeying that country’s antireligious laws.

Today’s freedom fighters are the people like Eddy Lepp and Charles Lynch, providing aid and comfort to the sick and dying by growing and supplying them with medicine, only to face the rest of their natural lives behind bars because what they did was “illegal”.

Today’s “whites-only” establishments are the “drug-free” workplaces keep cannabis users confined to low-paying part-time or temp service jobs, while the rest of the workers are allowed all the alcohol, nicotine, and prescription medications they desire.

Today’s lynchings are the Rachel Hoffmans and Jonathan Magbies who are murdered by police negligence, solely over their use of cannabis.  Today’s institutionalized discrimination is the over 20 million in my lifetime whose lives are marked with the scarlet letter of a drug conviction, affecting their child custody, government assistance, college financial aid, employment opportunities, professional licenses, voting rights, and liberty.

The prohibition of cannabis ultimately degrades human personality and is against moral law.  It is an unjust law that cannot stand, and we have a moral responsibility to disobey it.  In doing so, we express the highest respect for the law.  On this day when we recognize the greatness of Dr. Martin Luther King’s Dream, and on tomorrow, when we see part of that dream fulfilled, remember that we don’t fight to “make pot legal so you can get high”; we fight because the Pursuit of Happiness is our right and caging us for our method of pursuit is unjust.

Smoking pot is our civil right!

Let us all hope that the dark clouds of racial prejudice will soon pass away and the deep fog of misunderstanding will be lifted from our fear drenched communities, and in some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all their scintillating beauty.

Yours for the cause of Peace and Brotherhood,
Martin Luther King, Jr.

* I recognize that marijuana is legally grown at ElSohly’s lab at the University of Mississippi.  But consider that marijuana’s two purposes – to supply five people grandfathered in to the IND program and to provide marijuana for studies to prove how awful marijuana is to justify its prohibition.  In this metaphor it would be akin to saving a few vials of polio virus so you could use them to make vaccines.

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.