I was graduated from high school and started college in the mid-1970s. That was a different time, for sure.

My high school had a smoking area on campus for students.

At

in Thibodaux, La., you could smoke cigarettes in your classrooms. Ashtrays were stacked near the door, and you just picked one up as you entered the class, took it to your desk and lit up. Some of my professors smoked as they lectured.

The student union at Nicholls sold beer to 18-year-old students. That was the drinking age in those days.

And, more than likely, if a cop caught somebody smoking a joint at a concert or behind the dorm, he would scold rather than arrest. It was just part of the culture, and Mary Jane was no big deal.

Today, as part of the legacy from the infamous and failed War on Drugs, police are going to arrest a person they catch smoking or possessing weed. And the arrest will very likely wreck that person's life.

Our prisons are full of

.

I've always been a libertarian about marijuana. I don't believe it's a gateway drug. From what we know, it's much less harmful than either alcohol or cigarettes. Nobody has died from a marijuana overdose. That synthetic marijuana that's out there does kill; the real stuff just makes one comfortably numb.

Yet, getting caught with a little baggie of pot is going to get you arrested, fired, disgraced -- and maybe worse.

State Rep.

, bless her heart, wants to change that. She's introduced a bill, HB 550, that would make it legal to possess and use small amounts of "cannabis." Her bill also would allow the use of pot for medicinal purposes.

Imagine: Recreational use of marijuana legal in Alabama -- like it is in the states of Colorado and Washington.

No, it's not going to happen. Todd knows it, too. But as my colleague

pointed out, Todd's bill should get people talking. The more we talk, the more we think, the more we learn, and, at some point maybe, we realize that criminalizing a plant that simply (from what I've read) makes a person get the munchies and fall asleep probably is way too harsh.

This is something Republicans who control the Legislature should think seriously about. They're having to borrow from the state's savings account and divert money from children's programs to balance the state budgets.

Legalizing and taxing marijuana -- even if it were approved for medicinal purposes only -- would create a new stream of revenue for the state, and it wouldn't be a dreaded tax increase many Republicans have vowed never to allow.

Todd's bill is ahead of its time for Alabama, but the discussion must get started. Maybe her cannabis bill will at least put some fire to the bong.

Joey Kennedy, a Pulitzer Prize-winner, is a community engagement specialist for AL.com and The Birmingham News. Reach him at jkennedy@al.com.