Legalizing Marijuana Essay Research Paper SHOULD MARIJUANA

Legalizing Marijuana Essay, Research Paper

SHOULD MARIJUANA BE LEGALIZED.

Currently drugs remain high on the agenda s of politicians, and drugs are considered one of the major problems affecting our country. I believe that the negative effects associated with drugs would be reduced greatly if the United States adopted a policy towards the total legalization of marijuana. By this I mean completely legalizing marijuana for recreational, medical, and other uses. The current drug policy of our government is obviously failing. Drugs are quiet present in our society, and the United States drug policy has not stopped drug trafficking to the point where it is beneficial. Drug laws have created corruption, violence, increased street crime, and disrespect for the justice system. Besides that the American people should be allowed to enjoy what they like to do while law enforcement focus their attention on other more serious crimes. Therefore I plan to cite a brief history of marijuana s early uses before and after its prohibition in 1937, myths about marijuana, and why it should be legalized.

Marijuana comes from the hemp plant, which can be grown on fields across the nation and was cultivated heavily in the colonial period. After 130 years of being able to grow and consume marijuana, the potential problems of marijuana were brought into the public eye in 1932. Harry J Anslinger, the commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, wrote the book Marijuana: Assassin of Youth (Goldman). In the book Anslinger portrayed images of criminals and young men who became killers under the influence of marijuana. Anslinger s book put public pressure on President Franklin Roosevelt to sign the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937. This law made the use and sale of marijuana federal offenses.

Marijuana didn t reappear in the public eye again until the mid-1960 s when the Hippy emerged. Still widespread objection to the use of marijuana remained. Marijuana then became part of the culture of college students and middle class youths. During the next ten years marijuana use escalated to the point that it was literally everywhere. Marijuana use was becoming a more accepted practice across the nation.

In 1970, the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act reduced the classification of simple possession and non-profit distribution of marijuana from felonies to misdemeanors(Himmelstein). However, Richard Nixon declared a war on drugs in 1973 and over the next twenty years each succeeding president continued to escalate the drug war. This particular drug war is not only against marijuana but also harder drugs that are more dangerous. This policy has obviously done nothing to stop the recreational use of marijuana in this country. Rather it is causing great harm.

When some people imagine the legalization of marijuana, they fear a marijuana free for all with everybody constantly getting high and the government being burdened by the legalization. In fact, the process of legalization would include a law passed by Congress allowing the government to regulate the content, quality, and distribution of marijuana. The laws would be similar to the current laws regulating alcohol and tobacco, including laws governing age, limits for driving, and distribution (McGrath). Also a thorough investigation of the costs and benefits of legalization must be examined before any policy is implemented.

As mentioned earlier, there are several myths associated with the use of marijuana, which anti-legalization supporters repeatedly cite. One of these is that marijuana uses causes brain damage. People who oppose legalization base their claim on a study done by Dr. Robert Heath on monkeys in the late 1970 s. Heath s work was criticized for its in suffiencient sample size of only four monkeys, its failure to control experimental bias, and the misidentification of normal monkey brain structure as damaged (Haggar). In fact, the Journal of the American Medical Association conducted two studies in 1977 and they showed no evidence of brain damage in heavy users of marijuana. Later that same year the Journal of the American Medical Association came out in favor of legalization of marijuana (Haggar). If marijuana did cause brain damage would they be in favor of legalizing it.

In the same way, marijuana has been connected with damages to 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 THC. The scientific community rejected Nahas s connections between the petri dishes and the human beings because the data was invalid. Studies of actual human populations have failed to demonstrate that marijuana adversely affects the reproductive system (Haggar).

A persistent myth about marijuana is that it is a gateway drug, which is a softer drug that leads to the use of harder drugs. The Dutch partially legalized marijuana in the 1970 s and since then the use of heroin and cocaine has sharply decreased (Janssen). The opposite of this gateway is also present in the United States. In 1993, a study by the Rand Company compared drug use in the states that have lessened the penalty for marijuana and was made more available, hard drug abuse decreased. What science and real experiences tell us is that marijuana tends to substitute for much harder drugs like alcohol,