Seeing Eye to Lone Star Eye

I very much agree with Luis’ poignant blog post titled “It Is Time to Go Public”.  He starts off with a disclaimer about not having children, and I am in that same boat.  Being older, it has turned out that I am one of only a few in my friend group that has chosen to not have children while all of theirs are in public school already.  This leads me, personally, to have very strong opinions on the vaccination talk that has been circulating.  I’m around a lot of kids and I love them dearly.

I’m unsure of the specifics of HB 2474, but generally, I do agree that vaccination statistics should be public.  I would not agree with a public listing of each student’s name being because it’s not the child’s decision and it would be awful for them to be shunned for their parent’s decision.  However, there has to be a way to let the general public know where potentially dangerous zones are.

I’ve had a lot of heated conversations with people over the subject of vaccinations.  It’s very touchy.  My personal opinion/idea of a perfect world, though, would be that the fad of thinking immunizations cause autism will blow over, everyone will become a scientist, and nobody will get polio OR cancer ever again.

A Sticky Icky Situation

I feel very strongly that Texas should make the selling and possession of marijuana legal and regulate it for several different reasons.  First of all, if lawmakers would take a step back, they would realize that this legalization falls right in line with the natural progression they've been striving for all along in trying to be independent and pave their own "Texas" way.  It doesn't make any sense that they are fighting an opportunity to let Texans do whatever they want in their own home and have a little more freedom.  

Secondly, there is a whole lot of money to be made from legalizing marijuana and we all know how much that would make our government happy.  They could tax the heck out it, pad their pockets, and still have leftover money to throw towards education, transportation, etc.  In addition, if it were already legal, perhaps the border with Mexico wouldn't be so saturated with people trying to smuggle it in.  Of course there will still be trafficking of all sorts because that is the world we live in, but border resources could be better spent on preventing human trafficking and fighting a war on actually harmful drugs.  

This brings me to the most compelling reason, in my opinion, to legalize marijuana; not only is it the safest drug there is, it is a million times safer than drinking alcohol.  For some reason this seems to never infiltrate Texas legislators' minds.  It's a win for everyone and yet I am fully aware that Texas will fight this tooth and nail until it becomes a Federal law.