Legalizing Marijuana Essay, Research Paper

Legal

I didn t inhale, was President Bill Clinton s reply when the news about his experimenting with marijuana was released into the media. Over seventy million Americans, including President Clinton, admit to using marijuana. Marijuana has been referred to as the overwhelming drug of choice among teenagers (Levine 52). The legalization of marijuana use has been an extremely heated and controversial issue in the past few years but the war on drugs has been going on for over 80 years with no logical resolution except to legalize it. The fight to legalize marijuana has been long and strenuous because of all the differences in opinions on the matter. Some think marijuana should never be made legal, others believe it should be made legal for medical reasons only, and some say it is our constitutional right and should not even be questioned.

The power of marijuana is something of another world. It has a power that can not be explained but is so potent it can make friends out of enemies. Marijuana is a common ground for most, a way to get a grasp on a stressful situation, and to chill out from the hustles and bustles of everyday life. Hippies are the ultimate poster children for this powerful plant, people who know how to handle it, respect it, and use it to it s full potential. Hippies are one of the only ones today that don t take advantage of the purchasing, selling, and consumption of marijuana.

Because this weed is such a desired product, some people that were never taught marijuana ethics get into the selling of it and end up abusing marijuana and the people that smoke it. When one takes advantage of the fact that they can get marijuana and somebody else can t that is when situations get undesirable. Some people who sell marijuana have been known to short bags by miss-weighing it, pinching bags, or by selling to people who don t know much about marijuana and taking advantage of them. This kind of behavior should never happen, but unfortunately that is how most of what is smoked gets around.

There are different ways of getting high on marijuana. The most common way of getting marijuana in your system is by smoking it, but the other possibilities are as far as the mind can take you. I have been to Phish, Grateful Dead, Ekoostik Hookah, and other concerts in which a trip to the parking lots pre-show or post-show will get you any marijuana related product you can imagine. Marijuana is put in brownies, cookies, and tea; sometimes you can even find people selling grilled cheeses seasoned with marijuana. It is amazing.

Marijuana paraphernalia is also a hot item, unusually so on college campuses. Does it make sense that products that are knowingly sold for the consumption of something illegal to be legal. To make it even more ironic, I know people who have taken glass blowing classes through the university, and now sell pieces for $10 to $300+.

Marijuana is a fairly mild, non-addictive drug with hallucinogenic properties. These properties are obtained from the flowering tops, leaves and stems of the plant. The primary active chemical in marijuana is tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC (www.encyclopedia.com). Marijuana is not a single substance of uniform type. It consists of varying mixtures of different types of the plant, and their properties range from virtually non-existent to hallucinogenic in its stronger forms and at higher doses.

A main argument against the legalization of marijuana is derived from the effects of marijuana and the idea that it is addicting. The most common of short term effects are alteration of time and space perception, a sense of euphoria, relaxation, dulling of attention, fragmentation of thought, and impaired immediate memory. There are also some more serious side effects that occur with higher doses such as disrupted sense of self, personal unreality, visual distortions, hallucinations, and paranoid thinking. Marijuana has been placed in a category with cocaine, heroine, and LSD, as a Schedule 1 drug, and is said to be addicting. For a drug to be classified as addicting it must be proven that numerous individuals have trouble end it s use or that it interferes with other life activities. National surveys have shown that that one third of Americans over the age of 12 have used marijuana and only 2.8% of all those people have used it in the last week. And also of the 2.8% daily users, used marijuana in a way that it did not interfere with other life activities, proving that marijuana is not addictive.

There are others whom oppose the legalization of marijuana, but think it is okay to be used for medical purposes. The medical usage of marijuana has been traced back to 2737 BCE. In the past it has been used for an extensive range of illnesses such as gynecological disorders, migraine headaches, alleviation of withdrawal symptoms from other drugs, insomnia, asthma, and labor pains. Lester Grinspoon, M.D. author of Marihuana; The Forbidden Medicine states we have 5,000 years of recorded experience to show us it is not toxic. Marijuana continued to be widely prescribed for pain relief up until it was made illegal in 1937. At that time it s use was prohibited in any form although there is not a single death linked to its medical use. And to spite it s known effectiveness and safety, it was still placed under the Schedule 1 category.

Today, sixty years later, the government has begun to allow the medical usage of marijuana again. It is used on cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy to relieve nausea, people with epilepsy use it to prevent seizures, and has the ability to battle wasting syndrome in AIDS patients by increasing appetite. Marijuana is also used today for migraines, arthritis, and menstrual cramps.

Another reason for keeping marijuana illegal is that it is said to be linked to a high rate of crime. Research has never been able to identify a link between marijuana and crime, flatly. In fact it is believed that the legalization of marijuana would help lower the crime rate. Why should law abiding citizens be arrested and treated like criminals? Some claim that the imprisonment of marijuana users clogs our court system and overcrowds our prisons. Truly violent criminals are often paroled early due to sheer lack of prison space, there is a difference between rapists, thieves, and murderers and people who smoke marijuana and are humble harmless citizens. In 1997 there were 695,200 marijuana arrests made, which averages out to one every 45 seconds (www.norml.org/legal/index.html). Therefore, legalization would bring the prison population down below its rated capacity. It would reduce the court s cases by the thousands.

The main reason for legalizing marijuana is that it should be our constitutional right. Not one single person has died from the use of marijuana, yet even though billions have died from smoking and alcohol, they both remain legal. Why should a grown adult be allowed to smoke a tobacco plant with all of the added substances, that will indefinitely kill him or her in the long run, but not be able to smoke a perfectly pure organic substance?

Another plus side to the legalization of marijuana in the United States would be the availability of the many uses of hemp. Hemp is natures longest, strongest, most durable fiber. As a fabric it is softer, more insulating, more absorbent, more breathable, and longer lasting than cotton. One acre of hemp produces as much paper as 4.1 acres of trees. Anything that can be made out of wood or plastic can be made out of hemp, but hemp is biodegradable. If only 6% of the U.S. was farmed with hemp, there would be enough energy produced to provide for all of America s energy needs and end the dependence on fossil fuels. (http://www.hemp.com/101/QuickFacts.asp) There is so much more information about hemp that that alone is a good enough reason for legalizing marijuana.

Marijuana has been an extremely controversial issue for years and has caused problems that could undoubtedly be avoided if it were made legal. To be legal or not to be legal, this question will probably always be a controversial issue in our society. We can only hope that as the years progress our situation will improve little by little, and one day marijuana will be made legal.

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