In fact, it's a lot like an odor we get closer to home in Kansas. Like from stockyards in July.

A push is under way to legalize and tax marijuana in the Golden State to help offset budget shortfalls brought on by the recession.

As news has emerged about the proposal, it's generated discussion about whether pot should be decriminalized in other states and used as a source of tax revenue.

In this very publication, in fact, a columnist recently suggested Kansas should consider following California's lead.

Bad idea.

Not that it would stand much of a chance of being passed in our conservative state, anyway, but the proposal isn't even worth being kicked around with any amount of seriousness.

True, marijuana is a cash crop that could generate income for producers and revenue for the state. Goodness knows it's apparently easy enough to grow the stuff in Kansas, judging by the number of fields that have been raided over the years.

But legalizing it could open a Pandora's box.

The state has enough problems with intoxicants without making another one more widely available. For example, the Kansas Traffic Safety Resource Office reports that the state averages 10 alcohol-related traffic crashes per day and that alcohol is involved in 28.8 percent of all traffic fatalities.

That's just one way that one drug is affecting the lives of Kansans. Why throw another legal drug into the mix?

Increasing the availability of marijuana also could add to the problems of underage Kansans and substance abuse.

The easier it is to obtain the drug, after all, the more likely it will wind up in the hands of minors. And if the result would be anything like the situation the state is facing with teens and alcohol, the effect would be staggering.

Kansas Family Partnership Inc., a nonprofit organization dedicated to prevention of drug and alcohol abuse, recently issued a report showing underage drinking cost Kansans $229 million in medical costs and loss of productivity.

Again, that's just another sliver of the variety of problems with substances.

Granted, Kansas has loosened its blue laws in other areas, so much so the state government even got itself into the casino business. We're selling liquor on Sundays and in open saloons in many places, too.

Whether those changes have made the state a better place is open to debate, though. They've exacted costs in both human and financial terms, related to addiction and abuse.

The pro-pot crowd may argue that marijuana isn't as addictive or destructive as alcohol and many other drugs. Go ahead, but the bottom line is the revenue stream marijuana might provide the state isn't worth the river of social and medical costs it could unleash if made more easily available.