Long-time marijuana advocate Willie Nelson is reportedly going to produce his own marijuana for sale, called Willie’s Reserve.  Seems like Willie Weed would be more accurate, but hey…what do I know about marketing (or marijuana for that matter).   As an aside, I went to a Willie Nelson concert circa 1980 while living in southern Arkansas.  While most concerts have the main act later, Willie was MIA, and likely stoned for several hours.  He did show up around 11 pm (I think the show started at 7:30 or so) and played quite a few songs.  But his drug use clearly affected his ability to perform.  The report of Willie’s Reserve comes as the difficulties of legalized marijuana in Colorado continue to climb.

In the video above, a young man from Tulsa went to Colorado and experimented with edible marijuana and smoking pot. After eating a few of the candies and feeling no effect, he began consuming them like pieces of popcorn.  He apparently had a great life in front of him; but the ingestion of so much marijuana into his system caused him to become suicidal, and he took his own life with a gun.  This is the 3rd death in Colorado associated with marijuana according to the report.

I have previously commented that I think the War on Drugs causes more harm than it does good, and ought to be ended.  Nevertheless, I have never advocated for legalization.  I suspect this is part of my not quite completely excised muddle-headed thinking:  I am well aware of the economic arguments (which I agree with), that legalization would lead to higher quality and lower prices, which would undercut the ugly underbelly of the drug cartels and gang violence and lead to actual safer consumption of the deadly product.  I also don’t think it would lead to significantly higher drug consumption than we have today .  Further, legalization would allow taxation of the product to help treat the social costs of drugs (which are already there, legalization or not).  Yet it is always stories of the young man dying from edible marijuana that keeps me from endorsing legalization.  I remember vividly the story of Lennie Bias, the #1 draft pick of the Boston Celtics, who allegedly for the first time, snorted cocaine after being picked by the Celtics in 1986 and died immediately from a heart attack.  Yet while I lament these deaths, I also understand that criminalization is actually leading to far more violent deaths.  Hence my struggle.  So I remain a critic of the Drug War while not quite yet able to go for legalization.  We live in a fallen world, and some choices are just not clear or easy.

Note that this is an entirely different question from use of marijuana; absent some arguable cases of medical marijuana, there is no redeeming purpose of the product.  Getting you high, while doing harm to your body, is not a purpose that Bereans (or anyone else) should engage in.  I am not rooting for Willie Nelson’s success.