Buckle up, it's going to be a long ride.

A friend sent me an article today that said a record number of the U.S. population is incarcerated - one out of every hundred, roughly. One would think that it's hardened criminals and repeat offenders, but as it turns out, it's mostly drug offenders and people who are not a threat to society.

A report released Thursday by the Pew Center on the States, a self-described non-partisan group, found that 2.3 million Americans — or roughly 1 in 100 adults — are living behind bars, and that the consistent increase in the country's prison population over the past 20 years has been driven by policy choices, not by spikes in crime or the nation's population.

On average, states spend 6.8 percent of their general fund dollars on corrections.

Of course, when I say society, I'm talking about the country at large. The country at large has this idea that drugs are bad and that people who use them are a menace and should be ... incarcerated. Hence the issue.

Drugs aren't necessarily bad, especially if you're in the business of dispensing them legally. Legal drugs are a billion dollar business in this country. You can't watch your TV for 15 minutes without seeing an ad for erectile dysfunction, cholesterol lowering or mood altering drugs. The ads generally are not as long as the disclaimer that tells you the potential side effects which include (but are not limited to) dry mouth, vomiting, dizziness or death. Death is the extreme side effect, so let's focus on the dizziness and dry mouth for now.

The rate of increase for prison costs was six times greater than for higher education spending.

Meanwhile, the people at Anheuser-Busch and the like are peddling the last legally dispensed over-the-counter drug, which we call alcoholic beverages. What you'll see at your local liquor emporium are some brands of vodka or other liquor that are 100 proof - or 50% alcohol. That's 50% of the beverage that is distilled spirits. Half the volume of the bottle. Are we clear? Good. Then we'll continue.

In America (the land of the free) we are able to dispense mood-altering drugs and beverages that are half alcohol, but we still have so-called "controlled substances" that in some cases are not as big an impediment on our behavior as alcohol and prescription drugs.

The drug I'm talking about is marijuana. This might make me the worst person in the community, but I will say (here on the Internet) that if marijuana were made legal I would never take another drink of alcohol. Why? Because pot doesn't make me wake up with dry mouth and a headache and I don't regret using so much and collapsing in a heap at the end.

I wish I could remember where I read it, but I recall seeing an article that said if the Food and Drug Administration had to approve sugar as a food additive today, it would not because of all the issues surrounding its use. It strikes me as odd that the same government who would allow cigarettes to be sold and sugar to be added to food would allow drug companies to sell products that could potentially cause the users to lose control of their central nervous system. I think that we're loosening the standards in some cases.

The companies that market drugs that can cause a 4-hour boner are the same ones telling us that impotence is bad and needs to be cured. The 4-hour boner is a necessary risk we take when we use a drug to get a boner in the first place. I'm guessing that the potential 4-hour boner is the reason most people use the drug to begin with.

Baldness is a problem, or so we hear. Propecia can't be handled by pregnant women because it may cause birth defects. Cymbalta is prescribed to treat depression, because God forbid we're sad. Side effects may include appetite changes, constipation, diarrhea, dizziness, dry mouth, fatigue, headache, insomnia, nausea, sexual difficulties, sleepiness, sweating, tremor, urinary difficulties, vomiting, weakness. If I have diarrhea and sweating, chances are I'm going to be depressed, so what good is the drug doing me?

The point is that our government (in our best interests) allows drugs like Propecia and 4-hour boner medications to be sold in spite of the side effects, which in some cases are worse than the disease they are treating.

Four states - Vermont, Michigan, Oregon and Connecticut - now spend more on corrections than they do on higher education.

What I wonder is why, after all these years is marijuana still a "controlled substance"? Driving under the influence of alcohol is a problem because people drink and drive. If they drink at home and collapse in a heap on their bed, it's the bed's problem. Those of us on the road are oblivious. If marijuana is controlled, why aren't other drugs (like alcohol) controlled? There are two possible answers.

1 - The government realizes its huge mistake with alcohol and, having failed once at regulating it, have washed their hands of the issue and turned their back on it, preferring to regulate it with laws that punish people for using the very product that they so willingly provide.

2 - The government is unwilling to add another level of administration to an already mounting problem of people using legal drugs (including alcohol) and thereby creating another level of law enforcement, which is where the over-crowded prisons come in. You knew I was going to tie it in, right?

Jails are over-crowded and state budgets are strained. We are incarcerating too many non-violent criminals who are not seen as being threats to society. It costs $23,876 to keep a prisoner in jail for a year. For a guy who took a chainsaw to his family, that's a bargain. For a guy who got caught with a half ounce of weed in his pocket it's a waste of taxpayer dollars.

The steadily growing inmate population "is saddling cash-strapped states with soaring costs they can ill afford and failing to have a clear impact either on recidivism or overall crime," the report said. Susan Urahn, managing director of the Pew Center on the States, said budget woes are pressuring many states to consider new, cost-saving corrections policies that might have been shunned in the recent past for fear of appearing soft on crime.

If a half ounce of weed was legal, (or weed at all) we could avoid locking up people who otherwise just wanted to get a buzz to keep themselves from turning a shotgun to their head. It's another way to get though the day, just like that ice-cold Budweiser that we see advertised on TV or that depression drug that is supposed to make us dance in a field of daisies while we shit our pants and sweat like a New York waiter.

So, one of those "new, cost-saving measures" might be loosening the drug laws to allow people who just want a nice buzz to go out and get one without winding up in jail where there just aren't enough beds.

It ain't that far fetched.

"We're seeing more and more states being creative because of tight budgets," she said in an interview. "They want to be tough on crime. They want to be a law-and-order state. But they also want to save money, and they want to be effective."

Here's a way to be a law-and-order state and save money: Make pot legal, tax the shit out of it and keep people out of jail who only want to take their minds off the drudgery of everyday life. It's the same thing Propecia does, except I don't have to worry about shitting my pants afterward. What we need is somebody from Pfizer to start up a farm, get the RJ Reynolds people involved, and make a product that is better than any crap you could buy on the street (which isn't that difficult). They do it in Amsterdam. Aren't we smarter than people in Holland? Maybe not.

In the end, the people are happy and stoned, so the government can fuck them in the ass and they won't care (which is what they want). The government is happy because they're making more money than they could imagine and the drug and cigarette companies are happy because they're in on it. We can run TV ads that promote "responsible smoking" like we do with responsible drinking, and all the while we're winking and placing that tongue in our cheek with the realization that we're enabling the very behavior that we're prosecuting. Strange? It happens every day already, so why not make everybody happy?

It's a win-win.