A harmless plant that has been consumed for ages but yet it is illegal in most of the United States. Marijuana or its scientific name Cannabis Sativa is seen as a bad and dirty drug by the U.S. government and has been made illegal in this country which is all about giving rights to people. So why not give people the right to smoke a harmless plant in the privacy of their homes? I don’t see why we shouldn’t be allowed this right it’s not affecting anyone but the person who consumes it. I for one am all about legalizing it because it can only help us. Marijuana not only will help from a medial aspect, but also it can lower the crime rates in the U.S. and help out our economy.
Schools today teach the kids that smoking marijuana will make you have hallucinations and is a gateway drug that will lead you to smoking crack and other drugs. But no they were all lies. Marijuana is not a gateway drug we have a choice on what we do. The fact that it’s illegal may be the reason why people turn to doing other more harmful drugs. They get the mindset that if they are already breaking the law, why not do other drugs that are illegal it’s the same thing.
Marijuana is smoked to relax the body. Back then it was primarily used for medical reasons, still is some places. So why a sudden change if it supposed to help us it shouldn’t be illegal. It helps people deal with glaucoma and patients who have AIDS it makes them feel less pain. (Mack) We are allowed to purchase alcohol and tobacco which is far more harmful to the human body than marijuana is. There still hasn’t been an incident reported in history of death by the ingestion of marijuana but every year there are thousands of deaths due to alcohol. So if alcohol kills more people why is it legal to purchase?
So is marijuana addictive? I personally think yes, but that’s only people who use it too much, and this may cause a problem for them and the people around them. But when it comes to addictive drugs, marijuana is well likely to be on the bottom of the list. Not everyone who smokes marijuana becomes dependent of it. As I already said no one has died from smoking marijuana and overdosing it, but that can be said for other drugs and I’m referring to the prescription drugs you can purchase at a local pharmacy. People who smoke marijuana more on average still smoke less than people who smoke cigarettes. There still hasn’t been a case when someone was diagnosed with lung cancer by smoking marijuana, but with cigarettes it’s a whole another story.
If legalized the drug would affect the crime rate in a positive way. Officers today spend their time arresting people for something that shouldn’t even be deemed a crime. People who smoke it since its illegal are categorized as criminals because the drug is illegal, but everyone should know that they are just your average citizen that may be your neighbor. They have a job, a family, but once they are arrested they are shunned from most of the community because they are now “criminals”. Marijuana isn’t even linked to aggressive and violent behavior, but instead mildly reckless behavior. People just assume that if you smoke marijuana you are a violent person because it a criminal drug, but that doesn’t make you one. According to the UN's estimate, 141 million people around the world use marijuana. This represents about 2.5 percent of the world population. (United)
If you look at the music industry many of today’s artists show and support the consumption of marijuana. Some of the artists are some of the most successful people in the world and marijuana hasn’t affected them in a negative way. There are many who support the legalization but the government will not listen. It doesn’t damage the brain and make you less intelligent like other drugs it just relaxes you like prescription drugs that are pain killers. But you can overdose on pain killers and die, but with marijuana it’s nearly impossible to do so.
I don’t see why cops even take the time going around arresting people for smoking marijuana when they could be focusing on bigger crimes. The cost for the small crimes is costing the states more than it is helping them. Why should the taxpayers be paying for someone to be sheltered and fed for doing something illegal? California saved about 1 billion dollars in one year after legalizing marijuana.(Miceli) Federal, state, and local governments spend about 60 million dollars annually on the drug war.(Gerber) Its mostly the drug cartels from Mexico bringing the supply of marijuana and one legalized the crime rates will start to deplete as so will the illegal drug smuggling. If legalized marijuana would stop profits to illegal organizations that are located outside of the United States. Being illegal, the selling of marijuana is an extremely profitable business that is, sending billions of dollars to countries overseas and to the ones south of the United States. But if taxed that money can all go into stimulating the economy. This might even cause a stop to the war on drugs in Mexico. We have been seeing this issue a lot in the news and Mexico is where most of the marijuana in the United States comes from. It is illegally smuggled here to be sold at high prices, which is what is keeping the drug lords in business, but if the government legalizes it they will lose customers and people to sell it to and the war on drugs will eventually come to an end.
So instead of spending money on locking up people who consume marijuana and sell it, why don’t we just legalize it and the tax it so the government can make money off it? Marijuana is California’s biggest cash crop responsible for $14 billion a year in sales. The state's tax collectors estimate the bill would bring in about $1.3 billion a year in revenue. (Miceli) So think of how it would help the U.S. economy, especially the state it is in now. Back in the day marijuana was one of the biggest cash crops until it became illegal in 1970.
History has taught us some things, and one of those is that prohibition never works. “A Prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded,” Abraham Lincoln. Alcohol was illegal at one point in the United States but now if you’re the right age you can purchase it. Even the great Albert Einstein had something to say about prohibition, “For nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced.” The man had a great point with that saying that whatever they illegalize they will not be able to enforce which is a true statement. I’m going to go with the genius here and say they should just quit trying to keep it illegal and just legalize it and regulate it. Which brings me to another good point if the government regulates the sales of marijuana like putting an age you can purchase it, it may reduce the number of youth that smoke it. The reason is because drug dealers are willing to sell to anyone as long as they make a profit. That where the regulation come is now that the government can regulate who is able to purchase it, drug dealers will slowly start to go out of business.
Some people might say, “So if we legalize marijuana why don’t we legalize prostitution?” For one reason I don’t think it’s as easy to regulate as the sales of marijuana. Another reason is it can’t be taxed, but marijuana can. Not only will the legalization of marijuana help our dwindling economy, and lower the crime rate, but think of the people who will actually use it for enriching their health. To sum it all up sooner or later they will have to legalize it because prohibition never has worked.
Works Cited
Miceli, Margaret. "Legalizing Marijuana Can Help Economy - The Daily Collegian Online."The Daily Collegian Online. 16 Mar. 2009. Web. 03 Nov. 2011. <http://www.collegian.psu.edu/archive/2009/03/16/legalizing_marijuana_can_help.aspx>.
Mack, Alison, and Janet E. Joy. Marijuana as Medicine?: the Science beyond the Controversy. Washington, D.C.: National Academy, 2001. Print.
Novak, William. High Culture: Marijuana in the Lives of Americans. New York: Knopf, 1980. Print.
Goode, Erich. The Marijuana Smokers. New York: Basic, 1970. Print.
Gerber, Rudolph J. Legalizing Marijuana: Drug Policy Reform and Prohibition Politics. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2004. Print.
United Nations Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention, Global Illicit Drug Trends 1999 (New York, NY: UNODCCP, 1999), p. 91.
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