Marijuana Should Be Legalized
Generally, throughout the globe there exists wide ranging varieties of rules, laws and guidelines in relation to both the medical marijuana and marijuana in general. Accordingly, some states around the world have lenient laws when handling matter relating to medical marijuana and marijuana. For instance, countries such as the England and Australia, encourages the use of medical marijuana and have been noted to accord exemption of pursuing criminal charges to its suppliers. On the other hand, Holland, allows full legalization of all types of marijuana. Thus, Holland reassures and supports many small business entrepreneurs with an aim of encouraging its smoking and eating. Finally, in Portugal, the government has no laws prohibiting any type of drugs thus, all drugs ranging from marijuana to cocaine, to heroine are legal in Portugal. Therefore on this paper the objective is to seek reason and sufficient evidence in support of legalizing marijuana.
Over less than a decade in America, the public opinion on the consumption of marijuana has affectedly shifted toward support for it’s the legalization. In has been observed that for reasonable period in the past, attitude on this issue remained quite stable, however the turn of the millennium disturbed this long-standing compromise. As such, emotions in favor of marijuana legalization has raised by nearly twenty points fairly over a decade. Thus, the same statistics indicates that the section of Americans who perceive the consumption of marijuana to be immoral has equally decreased thirty two percent up from fifty percent in just seven years. Similarly, a current national survey presented a very narrow national majority in favor of legalization- the supporters of this position translated this sentiment squarely on the ballot initiative victories in both Colorado and Washington State in the year 2012 (Galston and Dionne 1-17).
Furthermore, a good reason as to why marijuana should be legalized, is that over the past few generation in America have come to understand that the standoff has always created a gateway to harder drugs. In fact most Americans have started a debate on which drug is worse between marijuana and alcohol. On this light, several surveys have establish that a slight majority now believes that alcohol is more damaging than marijuana to both individuals and society as a whole. Thus, from a sociologist point of view, the inducement is to deduce that the inclination in favor of marijuana legalization is unstoppable, just like the present flow of opinions favoring same-sex marriage.
Moreover, globally medical marijuana has never been fully acknowledged for its assistances especially to the sick for the simple reason that many people write off marijuana as a bad drug. However, when paralleled to modern medications, marijuana is regarded to be a far-reaching medicine for the reason that it is natural and holds exceptional chemical compounds. Indeed, research has shown that marijuana contains stimulants that acts as hunger enhancers. As such, its consumption by either smoking or taking a pill version of marijuana, it then causes hunger ( munchies), people with diabetes and anorexia can smoke marijuana to stimulate hunger resulting to more eating, consequently making these patients to recover from their conditions. Therefore, by the legalization of medical marijuana and marijuana will then result to an extraordinary amount of goodness (Cohen 4). Likewise, there are several medical cases where marijuana has been attributed to being helpful to people in severe pain. For instance, cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy are known to experience and feel extreme pain and this makes doctors to prescribe medical marijuana with an aim of helping them to dull the pain (Huggins 1-13).
Additionally, legalizing medical Marijuana will defiantly help the government raise more money to finance its budget- this means that the government will generate more revenue for its economy simply by legalizing marijuana. For instance, through the imposition of high tax rates on the sale of marijuana but then sell the high taxed herb to the public through its agencies. This method has previously worked on drugs such as tobacco products. On this notion, the government should help remove the negative perception that marijuana earns from the public since as it has already been observed numbers keep increasing year after year as to the section of people that believe marijuana should just be legalized. Thus, if the government modestly legalizes marijuana and consequently raises the taxes on it, people will defiantly buy and consume it.
In addition, it is a fact that the government is spending a lot of tax payers’ money just to feed and maintain prisoners, and a good fraction of these prisoners are convicts of either buying or selling marijuana. According to Mikos (2009) the legalization of marijuana will result to decreased criminal activities. Further Miko establishes that the present day cost of maintaining a convict in a US jail is approximately 8% of the total tax dollars. Therefore, if marijuana is made legal, then lots of the ‘prisoners’ would be released and would in turn save the government millions of dollars (Mikos n.p).
Accordingly, there are other observable facts for instance that law has been unable to contain the consumption of marijuana. As such, over decades, the government is spending more and more trying to contain and prohibit the planting and use of marijuana whereas it still remains to be a fact the very many people in the country are its consumers (Jacques and Van Luling n.p). On this light then, these funds being wasted on unfruitful law enforcement practices ought to be channeled to other sectors. On the same platform, existing laws on marijuana seems to be biased against the blacks and the Hispanic minority groups. Really will a native white be prosecuted or suspected to be consumers. According to the High-times magazine, in the US 25% of marijuana convicts are blacks. Nonetheless, of all its consumers the whites have equal probability of committing the crime. Thus to eliminate the biasness then marijuana ought to be legalized (HighTimes n.p).
Similarly, by legalizing the sale and consumption of marijuana, black markets would be eliminated thus reducing the chances of teenage or underage consumption. In fact, it is true to state that the value of marijuana arises from its illegality (Armentano n.p). Therefore, similar to alcohol and tobacco legalizing it will make it more manageable. In conclusion, there are many misconception and distortion of facts about marijuana. As such, the drug has remained criminalized are consequently it has resulted to worse effects than it would if it was legal. On this light, it is only fair to legalize the drug and monitor it in a similar manner to alcohol and tobacco.
Works Cited
Armentano, Paul . “Cannabis’ Impact on Health Justifies Its Legalization, Not Its Criminal Prohibition.” CATO unbound: A journal of debate (2007): n.p. http://www.cato-unbound.org/2011/11/07/paul-armentano/cannabis-impact-health-justifies-its-legalization-not-its-criminal.
Cohen, Harold E. . “Legalizing Medical Marijuana.” US Pharm;35(1) (2012): 4. http://www.uspharmacist.com/content/d/straight%20talk/c/18901/.
Galston , William A. and E.J. Dionne . “The New Politics of Marijuana Legalization: Why Opinion is Changing.” 2013. http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/papers/2013/05/29%20politics%20marijuana%20legalization%20galston%20dionne/dionne%20galston_newpoliticsofmjleg_final.pdf.
HighTimes . “10 Reasons Marijuana Should Be Legal.” High Times (2012): n.p. http://www.hightimes.com/read/10-reasons-marijuana-should-be-legal.
Huggins, Nick . Medical Marijuana. Research paper. Ilinnois: Northern Illinois University, 2012. https://docs.google.com/document/preview?hgd=1&id=1WEM1e4jknFFD5p6pjCmd6W2XoHbRgC4kvo7g9X9A5Vw.
Jacques , Renee and Todd Van Luling . “This Is Why Marijuana Should Be Legal Everywhere.” The Huffington Post (2013): n.p. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/24/marijuana-legalization_n_4151423.html.
Mikos, R. . “On the limits of supremacy: Medical marijuana and the states’ overlooked power to legalize federal crime.” 2009. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract-id=1356093. 27 Nov 2013.
