Proposition 19 is a voter’s choice referendum in California to legalize small amounts of marijuana for personal use. The state was the first to legalize marijuana for medicinal use.

What may seem ironic is that the medical marijuana folks—those in the industry selling the drug to patients with a doctor’s prescription—are one of the two major opponents to general legalization.

The other opponent, much less ironic, is the beer industry.

Brewers don’t want any more competition for their product while the med pot people want to maintain their monopoly on the legal sale of marijuana.

There are myriad reasons—valid reasons—for not using marijuana. It is an intoxicant and some people view any form of intoxication as wrong. A full spectrum of what the drug can do to a user over the long term has not been fully studied.

But that lack of investigation has been due to the fact that the federal government doesn’t allow for any research that would indicate that marijuana is anything but evil.

Marijuana has been surrounded with disinformation for generations. It was made illegal because William Randolph Hearst didn’t want competition in paper manufacturing. (He had a vested interest in wood-pulp paper.) Chemical and pharmaceutical companies also wanted to avoid competition from products made from hemp.

Scare tactics and racism were used to make marijuana illegal. More hypocrisy followed. Farmers were forbidden from growing hemp, a related crop, until WWII when they were urged to grow as part of the war effort. There was even a film entitled “Hemp for Victory.” After the war, the ban was back in place.

We don’t advocate the use of marijuana anymore than we advocate the use of heroin, alcohol or tobacco. Use, however, should be treated as an option. At least it would be an option in a rational society.

The move in California is billed as financial. Marijuana is the state’s largest cash crop and most goes untaxed because of prohibition. It’s been estimated that between additional tax revenue and the cost reduction in not paying for enforcement of prohibition, California would have an extra $1.8 billion per year.

Legalization also removes the “forbidden fruit” allure the drug has. Telling people not to do something often makes them want to try it.

The failed war on drugs (some drugs, actually) has also been a dismal failure. Use remains up, while control is lax because drugs remain an underground and black market industry. Prohibition also increases crime. The geniuses in Washington and state capitals never learned from the first era of prohibition when alcohol was illegal.

Most importantly is that legalization is one of the steps needed to truly establish a condition of liberty. It is just one step, maybe even a small one, but necessary nonetheless.

Without choice, there is no liberty. Adult men and women must be free to make mistakes or they are not free.

Should Prop 19 pass, it would be seen as part of a nullification process, whereby states nullify federal laws by not enforcing them. That’s a good thing, especially in this situation. There is no Constitutional authority for federal prohibition of any substance, let alone a plant.

Though there are reasons for not using marijuana, they should not be considered reasons for keeping it criminal. The biggest reason for keeping marijuana illegal is that if it were legal, people would realize the government has been lying to them for a long time and they might wonder what other lies they’ve been forced to live by. Politicians can’t have that.