United States of Amerijuana

President Barack Obama was in Colorado recently, according to People magazine, visiting a neighborhood café where a dude offered him a toke of what he was casually inhaling. Did the Secret Service immediately pounce and haul away the stoner? No, this was Colorado, where marijuana is perfectly legal.

With at least two states — Colorado and Washington — now legalizing marijuana for recreational use, there’s a whole new economy developing around the sale of the little green bud that Ozzy Osbourne sang so sweetly to in Sweetleaf.

Yes, there are the usual rolling papers and bongs; but also special “child-proof” bags to keep children away from your stash; varieties of food laced with dope; even “aphrodisiac” sexual lubricants for women treated with THC.

So who says the United States doesn’t make good products anymore?

When even People magazine features a whole bunch of grinning “weedpreneurs” — people who are cashing in on the growing marijuana business — you know that weed has gone mainstream.

And now it’s come to this: the New York Times coming out in favor of legalizing the lowly bud, saying that America should just take a deep breath and… inhale.

Why does this not surprise me, somehow?

And yet, why does it feel so wrong?

Ever since Colorado and Washington made marijuana legal a year or so back, people have been watching the state-by-state experiment closely. And what they’re seeing, mostly, is a sea of green: tax money, that is.

Colorado predicts tax revenues of up to $100 million this year — and rising. Marijuana tourism alone accounts for a lot of this — people lured to “Rocky Mountain High” by the titillating promise of “legal” grass, freely available. Never mind the other, more conventional tourist attractions.

The weed tourism buzz has already struck some unintentionally hilarious notes — like this bit of news from Mandala Research: “Some travel businesses have been swift to capitalize on the growing demand. A number of travel services have been set up offering to take skiers from the airport to marijuana shops then to ski areas.”

Really, now. Doesn’t that order of events seem a wee bit crazy to you? “From marijuana shops to ski areas”? Yeah, that’s the first thing somebody who’s just sucked up a gram of Tangerine Kush needs to do: strap on some skis and slide down a mountain.

So the nation watches expectantly to see if the Great Marijuana Experiment leads to more crime, more deaths, more people playing crazy piano and gleaming maniacally, as in the movie Reefer Madness.

Instead, what they’re seeing is a drop in crime (fewer marijuana possession arrests, that is), a huge spike in profits from taxes, more jobs and more products developing around legal grass.

More taxes, naturally, because like cigarettes and alcohol, marijuana is still “regulated” even if considered legal. (In other words, the state governments want their cut.) More jobs, of course, as weed sales skyrocket, but also the paraphernalia that goes along with it — scales, bowls, rolling papers, bongs, etc. Not to mention Doritos and Cheese Puffs, Krispy Kreme and Pizza Hut deliveries.

So now the New York Times weighs in, saying that federal laws prohibiting marijuana should be abolished. Picture it: No more Big Brother keeping people off the grass. The United States of Amerijuana. One nation under weed. Why? Well, it’s obvious that the NYT espouses a liberal point of view, looking at the issue from the perspective of vast expenses wasted on incarcerating people for marijuana possession offenses — but they spare little ink on the costs of allowing people to get wasted, period.

What the Times doesn’t mention is the fiscal argument for weed, which I fear is really at the heart of this debate. Just as legal gambling is seen as a boon for places like New Jersey and Las Vegas, states crave revenues as quickly as possible. What bugs me is the unspoken idea that marijuana could be a cure-all for a lot of states’ fiscal woes.

It bothers me that Americans might look at something like marijuana as an industry that creates jobs and profits. (Ironically enough, after waging a decades-long “war on drugs” in South America, to little avail.) I hate the idea of “quick fix,” “magic bullet” solutions to a flatlining economy.

Instead of focusing on, say, solar power as a growth industry, I’m sure some states are now rubbing their hands together and thinking: Hmm… hydroponic lamps and weed bucks...

Indeed, instead of focusing on a long-term investment in alternative energy, some Americans easily fall for new technologies, such as fracking. Like fracking (which involves high-pressure water blown through dense rocks to release natural gas), marijuana advocates would prefer to pass the bong (which involves high-pressure water blown through dense herbal matter to release natural gas) and collect the resulting tax revenues.

But here’s another issue, the big stoned elephant in the room: no one has really said how legal marijuana will affect on-the-job performance. I’m talking about bus drivers and train conductors, doctors and cops. People who need sharp, precise reflexes.

The idea of teachers, medical personnel, bus drivers and others going to work stoned should really give one pause. And this is a situation that the push to legalize doesn’t take into account. (Of course, a certain percentage of Americans already perform their jobs under the influence of legal and illegal prescription drugs, but nobody’s kipping about that just yet.)

And let’s be clear about this. Marijuana is a drug. Yes, so are alcohol and tobacco. But alcohol is a depressant (meaning it depresses the central nervous system), the active ingredient in tobacco is nicotine, which is a stimulant (meaning it stimulates the central nervous system). Marijuana’s main ingredient is THC, a psychoactive chemical that can cause memory distortion, mild hallucinations, and a decrease in motor skills. (Not to mention the munchies.) And also true: alcohol is a drug that has caused countless murders and highway fatalities over the decades; tobacco has caused millions of deaths due to cancer, emphysema and other ailments.

And marijuana? So far, it has no death toll. But what if its use is widely accepted? I, for one, don’t want to be riding Space Mountain at Disneyland with a stoner operating the controls.

Anyway, we’re into a new century, with greater economic challenges for everybody, both East and West. New jobs and products will need to be created to lift the US economy out if its inch-worming doldrums. It’s a time when Americans need to be more motivated and focused than ever before. I’m not sure curling up on the sofa and rolling doobies is the best possible way to do that.