Legalizing Marijuana Marijuana is one of the most common “soft drugs” used in the United States. It is usually smoked but it can be cooked and eaten. 32% of high school seniors and 11% of eighth graders have admitted to using marijuana. Some of the “pros” for legalizing marijuana are:
It can be a good source of additional tax revenue since an enormous amount of money is raised through government taxation of cigarettes and alcohol, so marijuana would create another item that can be taxed.
Police and the courts would be freed up for more serious crimes such as terrorism, harder drugs, rape, murder, and so on. In addition, an already overloaded civil court docket would be improved; thus, the wait time for other cases would be reduced and the cost for public defenders, prosecutors, judges, juries, and court reporters would go down and there would be more room in prisons for more violent or harder crime defendants and there would be less of a chance of them getting out early due to overpopulation in the prisons.
Drug dealers would lose most, if not all, of their business because legalization would lower prices and open up for competition; thus, drug cartels (which could include terrorists) would lose all or some of their customers.
Legalizing marijuana would create proper means to settle disputes in purchasing marijuana. You can contact your lawyer or the police if a purchase goes wrong instead of dealers and buyers taking it into their own hands if they get ripped off, which usually leads to cycles of retaliation through violence.
There are a number of medical benefits of using marijuana, one of the number one uses in the medical field is in the treatment of patients undergoing chemotherapy. Some even believe that it helps with cases of depression.
Aside from recreational drug use, marijuana has several industrial and commercial uses. Over 25,000 products can be made from the crop, including construction and thermal insulation materials, composites for autos, paper, and many more products. There are also “cons” to legalizing marijuana and some of them are:
Marijuana is often used as a stepping-stone drug that can lead to the use of harder drugs such as heroin or cocaine. This is particularly a problem since most people don’t start abusing harder drugs that are understood to be harmful. Marijuana use may simply encourage them to experiment.
Legalization would increase the chance of drugs getting into the hands of kids. Developing brains and bodies can be dealt some serious blows from using marijuana. Too often kids get their hands on tobacco and alcohol and we don’t want the same thing to happen with marijuana.
Marijuana use is not a “victimless crime” when you consider crimes that could be committed while being under the influence of the drug. “Driving high” would be harder to detect than drunk driving unless the user was smoking in the car and the smell was detected.
Marijuana can be addictive and a user usually can’t make rational decisions, nor can they disseminate themselves from drug taking.
Bibliography
Psychology and your life Feldman 2E www.balancedpolitics.org/marijuana-legalization.htm www.legalizationofmarijuana.com/pros-cons-of-marijuana.htm