Patriot and I have shared some thoughts of late, and with the news of the rat infested, mold ridden Walter Reed Building 18 in the news this week, I got to thinking……….

About the lack of services for our returning soldiers, and veterans. The Walter Reed Building 18 has been in the news the past week. That building is in Washington, at a state of the art facility. Can you imagine the condition of the Va hospitals and facilities around the country that aren’t in the public’s eye? I can tell you the Hines hospital in Chicago is nothing to write home about. Nor is the care you’ll receive there. The majority of our veterans do not live in major cities, and have to travel very long distances to receive medical care. This presents quite a problem for many elderly vets. Then there’s the story of the VA not spending 2.8 billion allocated for mental health services. The nightmare stories go on and on and on.

Now let’s talk about the costs of the war on drugs. Someone is arrested every 20 seconds for drug offenses. There have already been over 228,000 arrests this year. (It’s February 22!) Of those, about 114,000 have been for cannabis. Police arrested an estimated 786,545 persons for marijuana violations in 2005, The total is the highest ever recorded by the FBI, and comprised 42.6 percent of all drug arrests in the United States. Approximately 25% of prisoners are there for drug offenses. We spend billions of dollars yearly on the “war on drugs” and how many billion more to try these “criminals” and then house inmates who’s crime is smoking and selling marijuana. Billions. For programs that are ineffective.

Why not legalize marijuana and take the billions upon billions saved and earned and put it into building VA clinics all over the country so our veterans don’t have to travel hundreds of miles to get healthcare? Why not put those billions and billions into fixing outdated Va facilities like Building 18 at the Walter Reed complex? How about letting people who marijuana helps mediically have access to marijuana?

I know it will never happen……..I’m just sayin…….