This post stems from the Michael Phelps post I had a while ago, when I said it was time America started having a serious discussion on why marijuana was still illegal. Well, it’s high time (pun?) that we have the conversation.The stoner community is clamoring to say it: “Yes we can[nabis]!”

Turns out, with several drug-war veterans close to our new President’s ear, insiders think reform could come in Obama’s second term — or sooner.

The Michael Phelps ‘crisis’ was such a laughable offense that no one (in private) even blinked an eye. As everyone knows by now, Phelps was photographed smoking from an Olympic-sized bong during a University of South Carolina party last November. Phelps has apologized for behavior that was “regrettable and demonstrated bad judgment,” and has promised never to be a lesser role model again.

It was debated whether or not Phelps would be charged, as some at that party were, because the law is the law. And that is the problem.

Our marijuana laws have been ludicrous for as long as anyone has been alive. Between 40% to 60% of Americans, depending on your source, openly admit (so it is probably closer to 65%-80%) having tried marijuana at least once.

The US, in fact, boasts the highest percentage of pot smokers among 17 nations surveyed, in this study, including the Netherlands.

Were Phelps to run for public office someday and admit to having smoked pot in his youth, he would be forgiven (Like our current and former American Presidents). Yet, in the present, we impose monstrous expectations on our heroes.

And I don’t write this blog at random. Marijuana legalization is currently at the forefront of American debate. After generations of defending marijuana possession laws on moral, ethical, and religious grounds,  all of a sudden thanks to our economic crisis, more and more (40% of the country), thinks it is time to legalize marijuana.

Allow me to digress quickly: In February, Bill Maher said on his HBO show, “When FDR came to office in 1933, one of the first things he did was repeal prohibition. He said we can’t afford this anymore. He said look, ‘we’re serious now.’ We’re going to make serious changes and people like liquor. Well, in this same country decades later, people like pot.  If we ended that prohibition, that would be a giant pooling of money.”

That ‘socialist’ FDR saved the United States banking system quickly in his presidency based on the mistakes of his predecessors. Sound familiar? When he wrapped his financial rescue plan he famously said, “I think this would be a good time for a beer.” Two days after the bill passed, Milwaukee brewers hired six hundred people and paid their first $10 million in taxes. Soon the auto industry was tooling up the first $12 million worth of delivery trucks, and brewers were pouring tens of millions into new plants.

Fast forward to the current prohibition and economic crisis. President Obama said in 2004 that the war on drugs had been “an utter failure” and that America should decriminalize pot. Last July, President Obama told Rolling Stone magazine, that he believed in “shifting the paradigm” to a public-health approach: “I would start with nonviolent, first-time drug offenders. The notion that we are imposing felonies on them or sending them to prison, where they are getting advanced degrees in criminality, instead of thinking about ways like drug courts that can get them back on track in their lives — it’s expensive, it’s counterproductive, and it doesn’t make sense.”

Meanwhile, famed Libertarian and Harvard Professor Dr. Jeffrey Miron wrote in an article that marijuana legalization would generate between $10 and $14 billion in savings and taxes every year — conclusions endorsed by 300 top economists, including Milton “Free Market” Friedman himself.

And while President Obama was not yet in power, he utilized his Change.gov website to ask Americans what they were most concerned with to help him build his set of new priorities once in power. The public’s No. 1 question: “Will you consider legalizing marijuana so that the government can regulate it, tax it, put age limits on it, and create millions of new jobs and a billion dollar industry right here in the U.S.? Issue numero uno.

President Obama has already stated, “The Economy is job number one”. A real option, as Dr. Miron noted, is marijuana legalization. If 85% of all illegal narcotics seized in the United States is marijuana and $20 billion is spent annually, the legalization of marijuana will cut $17 billion annually from the United States federal budget.

Almost universally academics, economists, and politicians all agree that the drug trade is simply not working. It overpopulates prisons, wastes tax dollars, and does little in the way of educating or stopping narcotic use/traffic.

California is currently in a movement to introduce legistlation for the legalization of marijuana and if you live in California, what would you rather have? Pot smokers whose cases are tying up the legal system? Or better health care and roads thanks to a marijuana tax?

But alas, the answer from President Obama’s administration is — as it has been for years — a flat one-liner: “President Obama is not in favor of the legalization of marijuana.”

Nevertheless, the marijuana community is guardedly optimistic. “Reformers will probably be disappointed that President Obama is not going to go as far as they want, but we’re probably not going to continue this mindless path of prohibition much longer,” says NORML executive director Allen St. Pierre.

All I am saying is that the economic case for legalizing marijuana, and for lower the drinking age actually, is as compelling as it has ever been and that, in a time of great changes in the interaction between government and society (Hello corporate regulation), it would not be the worst thing in the world to have a serious national debate on the topic. I was inspired to ignite this conversation by the Phelps case and hope you carry the debate onward in your life.

Phelps may be an involuntary hero to this charge, but his name and face bring necessary attention to a farce in which nearly half the nation are admittedly guilty. It’s time to recognize that all drugs are not equal — and change the laws accordingly.