Legalization of Marijuana

Currently, drugs remain high on the lists of concerns of

Americans and are considered one of the major problems
facing our country today. We see stories on the news about
people being killed on the street every day over drugs. To
many people drugs are only an inner-city problem, but in
reality they affect all of us; users and non-users. I believe
that the negative affects we associate with drugs would be
greatly reduced if the United States adopted a policy
towards the total decriminalization of marijuana. However
society today is set very much against the legalization of
pot. The question is why?. After being legal and socially
acceptable, why in only the last century have people
decided to make it illegal? With all of the evidence that now
shows that marijuana has medicinal benefits, why are
people still hesitant to make it legal? (Guideline #1)
The problem is that the current drug policy of our
government is obviously failing. Drug laws have created
corruption, violence, increased street crime, and disrespect
for the criminal justice system. Current drug legislation has
failed to reduce demand. It's just too hard to monitor illegal
substances when a significant portion of the population is
committed
to
using
drugs.
(Guideline
#2)
Marijuana comes from the cannabis plant, which can readily
be grown on fields across the nation and was cultivated
heavily in the colonial period. After 130 years of being legal,
marijuanas potential problems were brought into the
public eye by Harry J. Anslingler, the commissioner of the

Federal Bureau of Narcotics and the author of Marijuana:

Assassin of Youth. In his book, Anslinger portrayed images
of Mexican and Negro criminals, as well as young boys, who
became killers while under the influence of marijuana. With
the added public pressure, President Franklin Delano
Roosevelt signed into law the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937.
This law made the use and sale of marijuana federal
offenses. At this point marijuana was removed from the
public eye, and heavy users included poor Negroes, migrant
Mexicans, and Jazz Musicians. Marijuana reappeared in the
mid 1960's with the emergence of the "Hippie." Widespread
objection to the use of marijuana remained because of the
set of valued and lifestyles associated with it, but use
appeared in colleges and among middle-class youths in the
suburbs. Marijuana became a symbol of a counter-culture,
and youthful rebellion. As a consequence, marijuana use
rose for the next ten years. Marijuana was becoming more
accepted across the nation. As the users of Marijuana
changed, the attitudes about the danger of Marijuana broke
down. In 1970, the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention
and Control Act reduced the classification of simple
possession and non-profit distribution from felonies to
misdemeanors. This was a good start. (Guideline #3)
However, President Richard Nixon declared a war on drugs
in 1973 and over the next 20 years, each succeeding
president continued to escalate the drug war. This policy
has obviously done nothing to stop the recreational use of
drugs in this country; on the contrary, it is causing great
harm. It's time to try something new. (Guideline #3)
When most people imagine the legalization of marijuana,

they fear a marijuana free-for-all with everybody constantly

getting high. Legalization would be a burdensome task for
the U.S. Government. In fact, the legal process would
include a law passed by Congress allowing the government
to control the content, quality, and distribution of marijuana.
The laws would be similar to the current laws regulating
alcohol, including laws governing age, limits for driving, and
distribution. A thorough investigation of the costs and
benefits of legalization must be examined before any policy
is implemented, but I believe it will show that the benefits far
outweigh
the
detriments.
(Guideline
#4)
Just because I believe this doesnt mean it is correct. The
facts are that the three general areas where people
opposed to the legalization of marijuana center their
argumentsis on health care, increased crime, and social
aspects. Marijuana is more dangerous than cigarette
smoking. Two Marijuana joints create more airway
impairment than do an entire pack of cigarette. One joint
contains three times more tar than do cigarettes and is
considered four times more dangerous. It dramatically
increases the pulse rate and blood pressure during use. If
marijuana is legalized, many project that lung cancer will
increase as the amount of marijuana use increases. These
are all valid arguments, but cigarette smoking is legal, a
booming business, and causes the same exact problems.
(Guideline
#5)
There are a number of myths associated with the use of
marijuana and its effects on your body which people who
are opposed to its decriminalization repeatedly cite. One of
these in that Marijuana causes brain damage. This claim is

based on a study of the rhesus monkey performed by Dr.

Robert Heath in the late 1970's. Heath's work was criticized
for its insufficient sample size (only four monkeys), its failure
to control experimental bias, and the misidentification of
normal monkey brain structure as "damaged". Actual studies
of human populations of marijuana users have shown no
evidence of damage to the brain. In fact, the Journal of the
American Medical Association (JAMA) conducted two
studies in 1977 and they showed no evidence of brain
damage in heavy users of marijuana. Later that same year
the AMA came out in favor of the decriminalizing of
marijuana. It seems to me that the AMA wouldn't do that if it
thought marijuana was damaging to the brain. (Guideline
#3,
#6)
Another myth is that marijuana damages the reproductive
system. This is based on the work of Dr. Gabriel Nahas,
who experimented with tissue cells isolated in petri dishes.
The cells were dosed with near lethal levels of cannibinoids
(the intoxicating part of marijuana). Nahas's generalizations
from the petri dishes to human beings have been rejected
by the scientific community as being invalid. Studies of
actual human populations have failed to demonstrate that
marijuana adversely affects the reproductive system.
(Guideline
#3,
#6)
A persistent myth about marijuana is that it is a gateway
drug, leading to the use of harder drugs. The Dutch partially
decriminalized marijuana in the 1970's since then the use of
heroin and cocaine has sharply decreased. The opposite of
this gateway affect is also present the United States. In
1993 a study by the Rand Corporation compared drug use

in states that have decriminalized marijuana and those that

have not. It found that in states where marijuana was more
available, hard drug abuse as measured by emergency
room episodes decreased. What science and real
experience tells us is that marijuana tends to substitute for
much harder drugs like alcohol, cocaine, and heroin.
(Guideline
#3,
#6)
Another misconception is that marijuana is more dangerous
than alcohol. Extremely high doses of cannibinoids cause
death. Extremely high doses are the key words here.
Scientists have concluded that the ratio of cannibinoids
needed to get a person intoxicated (stoned) relative to the
amount necessary to kill him is 1 to 40,000. That means that
to overdose on marijuana you would need to consume
40,000 times as much as you would to get stoned. The ratio
of alcohol varies between 1 in 4 and 1 in 10. Over 5,000
people die of alcohol overdoses each year, and no one has
ever died from overdosing on pot. (Guideline #3, #6)
These are just a few of the myths used by various groups in
order to keep marijuana illegal. Along with these myths
comes the false belief that crime will increase if marijuana is
legalized. Allen St. Pierre, Assistant National Director of the
National Organization for the Reformation of Marijuana
Laws (NORML), says that legalization will wipe out the
already 60-billion dollar black market by placing marijuana in
the
open
market.
(Guideline
#4)
It is the enforcement of the laws criminalizing the
possession, use, manufacture, and distribution of marijuana
that are causing the violent crime. This war on drugs is

wasting the money, as well as the lives of American people.

The widely recognized opinion maker William F. Buckley, Jr.
writes:
...The time devoted to tracking down, arresting and then
trying marijuana users and then trying marijuana users is
perhaps the greatest exercise in lost time in contemporary
activity. In the last two years, approximately 750,000 arrests
were made in our mad, quixotic effort to stamp out
marijuana. What this adds up to is millions of police hours
spent on bootless missions, millions of hours of court time
wasted, and millions of months in jail, using up space sorely
needed to contain people who can't wait to get out in order
to resume mugging and murdering. (Guideline #5)
The drug laws imprison a multitude of otherwise law abiding
people, a disproportionate number of them who are poor or
minorities, for non violent acts that are directed at no one
but themselves. Instead of eliminating drugs, the prohibition
of them just fosters an illegal industry able to inflate prices.
This is hauntingly familiar to the prohibition era of gangsters
present when alcohol was illegal in the 1920's. Because
drugs are sold on the black market, they cause violence,
deaths due to no quality regulation, and diseases from
sharing illegal drug paraphernalia. (Guideline #3, #6)
The American Civil Liberties advocates the full
decriminalization of the use, possession, manufacture, and
distribution of drugs. It does this for constitutional reasons.
The following is an excerpt from their policy on drugs which
was
adopted
in
1994:
Criminalizing the use, possession, manufacture, and
distribution of drugs violates the principle that the criminal

law may not be used to protect individuals from the

consequences of their own autonomous choices or to
impose upon those individuals a majoritarian conception of
morality and responsibility.....Enforcement of laws
criminalizing possession, use, manufacture of distribution of
drugs engender violations of civil liberties. Because drug
enforcement is aimed at behavior which is inherently difficult
to detect and does not involve a complaining "victim," it
necessarily relies on law enforcement techniques -- such as
use of undercover operations, arbitrary or invasive testing
procedures, random or dragnet seizures, and similar
measures -- that raise serious civil liberties concerns. These
enforcement techniques lead in practice to widespread
violations of civil liberties guarantees, including those
secured by the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Amendments.
(Guideline
#7)
The supporters of legalization believe that it will benefit
society in three ways, including revenue enhancement,
medical benefits, and hemp production. The ingest
argument
for
marijuana
legalization
is
revenue
enhancement for the U.S. Government. Much of the money
will be saved due to less law enforcement, court time, and
the cost of incarcerating prisoners whose only crime is
possession.
(Guideline
#7)
Considering America's annual marijuana harvest was worth
$50.7 billion in 1989 and $41.4 billion in 1988, $28 billion
greater than corn at $31.4 billion, marijuana could become
the leading agricultural product in the United States. With
trade regulations, industry regulations and consumption
taxes on he product NORML has estimated that legalization

would produce over $40 billion in taxable revenue. As

Congress debates the national debt, legalization would
provide the needed funds to help our economy. (Guideline
#7)
Legalization advocates constantly tout marijuana's
medicinal benefits. For cancer patients, marijuana reduces
nausea and increases the appetite. Marijuana also reduces
epileptic seizures and reduces nerve disorders in multiple
sclerosis patients. If it helps patients get extra quality time
out of their lives, then attempts to decriminalize it should be
supported. Legalizing marijuana for medical purposes, as
California recently did, could provide answers about
diseases and allow research to be conducted for future
purposes.
(Guideline
#7)
An area that does not gather too much publicity in the
legalization issue is hemp production. Marijuana comes
from the top leaves and flowers of the female hemp plant.
The fiber from the top can be used to make clothing, paper,
rope, and methanol fuel. Hemp is a plant that can be grown
in poor soil, thus not taking up any valuable agricultural
land. Hemp now grows in the U.S. because of its heavy
production in the 18th and 19th centuries. Seventy-Five to
Ninety percent of all paper used before 1883 was hemp
paper, including the first two drafts of the Declaration of
Independence. Hemp is safer for the environment. Hemp
requires 40% fewer chemicals to produce paper, and, over
twenty years, one acre of hemp can produce four times as
much pulp as can an acre of trees. The production of hemp
would save trees and clean up the air. (Guideline #7)

With all of the information made available to society by past

experiments, it should be easily seen that marijuana should
be legalized. The benefit of its decriminalization would
overshadow any of the detriments. However, I do realize
that some time in the future, further tests and studies may
prove that marijuana does cause harm to people. And if
there is enough evidence that can show a good reason for
pot to remain illegal, then I believe it shouldnt be
legalized. However, until the time where this information will
be shown, I still think that marijuana should be legal for all
people of age to use (Guideline #8)
Along with these myths comes the false belief that crime will increase if marijuana is
legalized.

The Rocky Mountain High-Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas (HIDTA) program stated that overall crime in

Denver has increased nearly 7 percent compared to previous years. The increase percentage in crime coincides with
the legalization of recreational marijuana in Colorado. While there is no direct cause and effect that can be identified
at this time, the rise in Denver crime certainly correlates with the legalization of marijuana.

As I said before, correlation does not imply causation.

Government prohibition of marijuana is the subject of enormous debate.
Advocates believe prohibition reduces marijuana trafficking and use, thereby
discouraging crime, improving productivity, and increasing health. Critics
believe prohibition has only modest effects on trafficking and use while
causing many problems typically attributed to marijuana itself. In particular,
prohibition does not eliminate the marijuana market but merely drives it
underground, which has numerous unwanted consequences.
One issue in this debate is the effect of marijuana prohibition on government
budgets. Prohibition entails direct enforcement costs. If marijuana were
legal, enforcement costs would be zero, and governments could levy taxes on
the production and sale of marijuana.