If we want to strengthen the bond between citizens and civic life, if we want to increase revenues without further taxing existing goods and services, if we want progressive ends — without regressive means — we must decriminalize the recreational use of cannabis.

We must stop arresting, prosecuting and imprisoning our fellow Hawaii citizens, whose only crime is to do what is legal on the mainland; whose only vice is a virtue elsewhere, in terms of adding to a state’s treasury and surplus of jobs; whose only wrong is a legal right in Alaska, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Nevada, Oregon, Vermont and Washington. (Now add Michigan to this list, since it became the first state in the Midwest to legalize marijuana for adult recreational use. The recent ballot proposal won by a 56-44 percent margin).

Why should Hawaii deny itself the chance to tax and regulate the recreational use of cannabis? Why should we continue to deny reality itself, when the demand to get high is incredibly high, so to speak? Why should we target users, when we know we cannot stop suppliers; when growers sprout like buds — and grow faster than the tallest weeds — because we would have to destroy the land to eliminate the usefulness of the land itself?

Now, let us ask a more reasonable question: Given the alternatives, should we legalize the recreational use of cannabis? In a word: yes!

The revenues from buying and selling cannabis can go into the state’s general fund. According to Hawaii’s Constitution, whenever the general fund balance at the close of each of two successive fiscal years exceeds 5 percent of general fund revenues for each year, the Legislature in the next regular session shall provide for a tax refund or tax credit to the taxpayers of the state, as provided by law. Translation: The more money we raise from cannabis, the more likely we are to get money back.

More likely, too, would be our ability to fund schools, libraries, parks and playgrounds. We could even give teachers, police officers and firefighters a raise. That these options are possible — that they are in fact probable, if we legalize the recreational use of cannabis — is an opportunity we must not ignore.

We should, therefore, stop waging war against human nature, when each battle is a crime of war against nature.

We should stop perpetuating the lie that the recreational use of cannabis is a gateway to chronic drug abuse and addiction.

We should stop sowing lawlessness, while we pretend to advance law and order, because our actions betray our words; because we punish people for political gain, so no politician can gainsay that he is not tough on crime; because we penalize ourselves as repeat offenders of a victimless crime, which is a crime against common sense.

Let us, therefore, come to our senses.

Let us realize that security is not synonymous with freedom; that absolute security requires the sacrifice of all freedom; that absolutism corrupts absolutely, supplanting ideas with ideologies and obliterating facts with feelings.

Let us realize that the recreational use of cannabis is neither worthy of condemnation nor of ongoing criminalization.

The sooner we accept these truths, the faster we will clear the air of innuendo and suspicion.

We will then see what so many already know: that the recreational use of cannabis is not a crime.

We must honor this vision, so all in Hawaii can see the truth for themselves.

Elizabeth Rice Grossman, of Kailua, is a community advocate and volunteer. Disclosure: She has a small investment in Pono Life Sciences, which holds a Maui medical marijuana license, but that is not motivating this piece.