Today I'd like to begin with a couple of battle-worn bromides which capitulate my platform:

Fish or cut bait.

Speak now or forever hold your peace.

Poo or get off the porcelain (but wash your hands first, and you know who I'm talking to, dude at work).

Aren't you just a little tired of this dance?

It's time to be blunt about the blunt. Time to okay the tokay. Time to stop considering the chronic a demonic tonic.

Enough already; let's legalize marijuana.

Paving the way with other controversial issues such as same sex marriage and men's ass implants, the state of California has also blazed the trail when it comes to lawfully blazing the reefer.

But nearly sixteen years after the passage of Proposition 215 which provided California's chronically ill citizens with a means to possess or cultivate marijuana for medicinal use, our federal government has decided to issue a fatwa on the fat one.

The feds have decided to bogart licensing programs on medical pot cultivation and shut down hundreds of marijuana dispensaries throughout the state. As a result, massive quantities of the sticky icky have been harvested but can't find a market.

Thus, an entire industry is regressing to its formerly sketchy underground distribution networks, spewing stale bong water on the golden state's multi-billion-dollar  freshy fresh economy.

I live in Seattle, a city which shares California's attitude about the weed. People here don't view it as a hard, gateway drug. We've all known someone who smokes way too much of it, but they're not staying up for twelve days straight, gouging their skin to a pulp and talking to trash compactor.

Their eyes aren't yellow, their noses aren't streaked with gin blossoms and they aren't breaking into your house to steal leftover painkillers from your dachshund's ACL surgery.

Additionally, the medical marijuana permit, or "green card," is a freaking joke. Certain doctors will issue six-month prescriptions in exchange for a couple hundred bucks and a good brownie recipe. Only Starbucks can claim a numerical advantage over Seattle's ganja dispensaries, which is why Howard Schultz may want to start offering video games, burritos and staying open until one.

Why not cut to the damn chase and legalize this stuff? Assess penalties as severe as alcohol-related punishments for driving under the influence of THC, which can easily be spotted. It's the car driving twenty miles per hour and stopping at green lights.

Reroute law enforcement's resources toward curbing stuff that kills us rather than the stuff which makes us crave hot fudge sundaes and Wheat Thins with salmon-infused cream cheese.

And tax, tax, tax the hell out of a pack of legalized spliffs. After a couple of years, the federal budget shortfall will vaporize into nothing worse than a slightly different type of deficit.

What was I just talking about?