The Maryland Legislature is currently considering the decriminalization of marijuana in the crab cakes and football state.
This decision comes six years after former Gov. Bob Ehrlich helped establish provisions that anyone arrested with 1/4 O or less of weed would only be subjected to $100 in fines plus court costs should that person prove that the drugs were serving a medical purpose.
Perhaps as might be expected, such "radical" thinking comes not out of a change in philosophy concerning drug use and abuse in America, but rather out of financial necessity. Like many states, organizations and individuals around the United States, Maryland is hurting as a result of the financial malaise that has engulfed the country in the last year.
Its budget has been adjusted, workers laid off and programs, funding and personnel rearranged in the state educational system.
Such financial pressures have necessitated state governments, like Maryland's, to find money wherever and whenever they can. Maryland's current trend toward Amsterdamism would help the state save the costs of charging, trying and incarcerating citizens for minor weed infractions.
So grab your bong, pick up some Kush and call your Congressman and tell him that you've got the munchies for some new law.
After all, smokin' trees with no fees, that's what Maryland does.
