Legalized cannabis would create more than $450 million in annual revenue for the Israeli government, a study this week by an Israeli financial research group shows. The figures are based on estimated black market sales of cannabis more than $707 million.
The only problem is that legalization doesn’t seem to have much support. Yet.

While the U.S. government teeters precariously on the edge of complete shutdown, hinging on a hyperbole-ridden argument over whether or not its citizens deserve proper basic health care, their neighbors to the north in Canada are on the verge of another revolutionary leap in government-backed healthcare reform.Starting tomorrow, the Canadian government will begin to pump $1.3-billion dollars into its Health Canada program, earmarked specifically to prop up large-scale free market medical marijuana growing operations across the country, in a move that is expected to create not only jobs and revenues, but hundreds of thousands of new medical marijuana patients as well.

Over the last six years, more than 80,000 Mexicans have been killed due to excessive drug violence in their country – in part due to the marijuana trade. Legalizing marijuana would help curb that violence and help repair a country that has been torn apart in places by drug cartels and the criminalization of marijuana consumers.
That’s the message from 67 high-profile Mexican businessmen, ministers, artists, attorneys and even a Nobel Prize-winning scientists delivered Wednesday in a paid petition in several newspapers across the country.

In news-you-already-knew news today, a study out of the University of Washington found that marijuana is the most popular drug in the world (alcohol was not included).
The study of illicit drugs also found that prescription painkillers used illegally are the most deadly drugs in the world with more than 78,000 deaths worldwide in 2010. For those keeping count that is 78,000 more people than cannabis killed that year or any year in recorded history.