Getting lost in the presidential race is an issue that will soon sweep across the nation. As once-prosperous and still most populous California goes, the nation will soon follow. 

It's called Prop 64, which will legalize recreational marijuana.

Bill Wilson died in 1971. He spent his life helping more people in one day than most of us do in our lifetime. His mission was to break the power of lies in the human mind when it comes to their one chemical vice. Sometimes its victims had to go through interventions. They were lying to themselves, and only close friends and family members could club them over their heads, so to speak, to compel them to see the truth. The propensity in humankind to self-deceive is overwhelmingly powerful.

Bill Wilson was the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous. The quiet hero. The morally decent hero. He didn't want his name to be revealed until he died. He had been known as Bill W.

The advocates for the marijuana industry have been lying to the public for decades about their chemically laced product. I've heard these statements from them and college students who listen to them and are now their customers: "Marijuana is better for you than alcohol!" (Do they mean a glass of wine with dinner? They never say.) "There ain't nuthin' wrong with it!" (It's full of bad chemicals.) "I used to have a drinking problem, but now I smoke marijuana, and it's okay. It's much better!" (Classic denial, as the user switched from one addiction to the other.) "I smoked a joint before I drove to school, and I got here all right!" (Dangerous denial, making the public less safe, as the increased number of car crashes in CO and WA demonstrate.) "It doesn't hurt my brain. I makes me more focused! It makes me smarter!" (Just smoke it until you're sixty and see what it does to your body and brain.) 

Predictably, after decades of lies told to willing victims who lie to themselves like alcoholics, Prop 64 is on the verge of passing -- by at least 60% for it.

It will take decades to unravel the spell that the marijuana industry -- soon to become Big Marijuana -- has cast over Californians.

It will be a happy day when, a decade or two from now, Big Law Firm sues Big Marijuana, costing the weed industry billions.

In the meantime, countless Bill Wilsons will have to rise up and help people get off that drug. 

But even then California will still be an irreversible Stoner State.

 Sad, very sad. Just one more sign of culture rot, as people freely vote for their own personal and public degradation and chemical enslavement and addiction.

California stonin' on such a winter's day -- for endless winter's days.

James Arlandson's website is Live as Free People, where he has posted Don't legalize recreational or "medical" marijuana, Twelve health risks from smoking pot, Five Myths about Marijuana and Society, and Five Myths about Marijuana and You.