Another guest post is by our pal and regular TPC contributor, David Garber:

Do my eyes deceive me? Am I reading this right? I hope it’s not glaucoma — because if it is, I may have to move to Colorado or Washington — or get my doctor to prescribe some special meds for me here in California.

A partial cure for what ails us, all of us, is marijuana. Yes, sweet Mary Jane. Good for the soul. Good for the eyes. Good for the budget.

Budget?

Here’s the latest word from Colorado — home of the recently passed freedom to smoke law. “I’ve seen some estimates in the high tens of millions, as much as $100 million for Colorado, whose voters legalized recreational marijuana use,” said Rep. Jared Polis, D-Colo., who’s pushing for federal legalization of marijuana in Congress.

Hmm, imagine what kind of education bills we could fund with that. Or how about a jobs bill? Certainly we’ve got some road and bridges that could use some help — or maybe even hiring some computer savvy returning vets to update the veterans system and get it from paper, to computer. Oh, boy, we could move those deserving soldiers claims full speed ahead.

Jeffrey Miron, a pro-legalization scholar at the Cato Institute, just predicted that legalization of marijuana in this country would net about $6.4 billion in new tax revenue — $4.3 billion for the federal government and $2.1 billion for the states.

4.3 BILLION DOLLARS? And that’s the low estimate.

Let’s get blazing, er, I mean fired up and decriminalize pot and let the users free from prison. Don’t forget to add that savings to the budget as well.

For the past 25 years, David Garber has been serving as the show runner and or writer on some of television’s biggest hits… Saved By The Bell, Power Rangers, 227, Bill Cosby Show and many other network series. His writing and producing have also netted David two very prestigious awards:the PRISM AWARD and the TV CRITICS AWARD – TV SPECIAL OF THE YEAR. Currently he’s authoring a short story series called “A Few Minutes With…”