Today the marijuana legalization argument to either to legalize it or not stands on a tied rope. One year after another, we get closer to marijuana being legal through all fifty states. Why is this plant illegal? Who thinks they have a say so on a plant that comes from earth’s soil? There are so many questions when it comes to this particular topic. The information gathered prior to this paper helps elaborate the standpoints on the legalization of marijuana. The government benefit from marijuana staying illegal. The way they collect money from busting people with marijuana. The expensive prices for medical marijuana because of government taxes. The way banks treat people with dispensary business. These things are just some of the many things that the government will benefit from because even after people do the time they are hit with a pile of bills.
The medical business does not want to risk the use of manmade medicine to a healthier, natural, resource to feel healthier. Three different pills can cure what one plant can do. No deep studies of the benefit of marijuana are done due to the fact of its legal status, but what we already know from it is phenomenal. The businesses that will be affected from it will agree that weed should stay illegal to protect their business, but they know the truth about its effects.
The legalization of marijuana has shown a pattern of happing from west to east through time. The legal status of the plant was reformed through the seven states opinion on it to change these laws. Although some jobs require being drug free to work for them despite that its legal in their state, it is still a federal law that it is not. Price, prom stated in his article crime and policing that “States have moved to legalize marijuana use, the number of users and arrests for illegal possession have grown. Marijuana arrests have dropped from their peak in the mid-2000s, but totaled more than five percent of all arrests nationwide in 2016.
According to the most recent FBI report, arrests for all drug offenses rose slightly, to one point five million in 2016”. (Price 18) It has come to the attention that people who practice the use of marijuana have been reporting to the hospital more from their miss information of the health benefit from it. The use of marijuana is better than taking pills, but once smoked; people lose the health benefits from it. Marijuana has never killed anyone before, but has affected people’s respiratory system because our lungs are built to breathe oxygen and nothing else. The article Marijuana Legalization states, “Marijuana-related hospitalizations have tripled since legalization, and visits to emergency rooms have climbed 30 percent, due mostly to excessive ingestion of the drug.” (Foerstel 12) So once the conversation comes up and people feel the confidence of going out and smoking weed. The law prohibits them from doing that, so they arrest them for crimes that are so innocent when people are actually breaking series laws. More people end up in hospitals because of their miss information of the practice of the drug. The drug is legal in the state of Colorado, but about 70% of the state banned commercial from being public just like Tabaco products.
Drugs have been around as long as humans have and our usage of recreational purposes are in history books. The war on drugs is it is a worldwide battle. Some countries are winning this war while some are tragically losing. Which begs one question that we have all found ourselves asking. “Can the war against drugs be won?” We will look at three countries/cultures who have taken on this battle. One who is currently losing this war, one who has made little to no impact, and one who has claimed victory?
When it comes to the war on drugs, it is safe to say that Mexico is currently losing this war. Seeing how Mexico was already one of the drug capitals of the world when its new president took power. He made a promise to tackle this issue. He did so by making minor amounts of drugs illegal, punishable with prison time, hitting the cartels and drug traffickers head on. This only resulted in overcrowded prisons and the mass killings of thousands who either were fighting this war or caught at the wrong place at the wrong time. With chaos flooding into the streets the people of Mexico, soon lost hope in their government that the war became a one sided battle. Since the government chose to arrest even the smallest offenses, many simple users have been marked as criminals. The lack of opportunity upon release their limited options was to join the cartels as mules or smugglers just to get by.
Another country who has little to no success in its war is The United States of America. America, like Mexico, decided to take this war on with an iron fist. Although, the amount of bloodshed that Mexico has seen has not hit our streets yet. Our prisons are far more filled than theirs are. We lead the world in low-level drug convictions and our prisons produce more addicts than they rehabilitate. Not only have our policies over stocked our prisons, but they have also gave police a lot of leeway when it comes to drug affiliated arrest. With little justice, America is only relocating its users into prisons instead of helping them.
However, one country in particular has decided to flip the script. Portugal was among one of the worst countries to face a drug predicament. Since the 1980’s, a shocking one percent of their population were hooked on heroin and other hard drugs. Portugal did something unprecedented that had astonishing results. Instead of following in the United States and Mexico’s way of solving it, Portugal decided to decriminalize possession and use of drugs. So how do you fight a war on drugs by allowing their usage? Do not treat the users as criminals, but instead as patients who need help. Instead of locking up anyone who is caught with drugs. If an individual with a possession of less than a ten-day supply of any drug, he/she go to a three person Commission for the Dissuasion of Drug Addiction. Made by a lawyer, doctor and social worker, the commission recommends either treatment or a minor fine. By making drug addiction a moral problem, the people of Portugal have seen amazing results.
Drug usage between the ages of 15-24 have declined dramatically as a result, so did their risk of drug related diseases such as HIV. Portugal may have been the first to earn a successful control on their drug policy. It seems like drugs may coexist in our societies until the end of time. However, we take the stance against them and along with the manner of which we approach it that determines their power on us. Today, we have learned that maybe treating those who engage in these minor crimes, as cold-hearted criminals will self-contained results in them dwindling into an infinite rotation. Portugal’s approach is one we should all take, and treat drug addiction as a mental and moral problem. The war on drugs is not something you can just win with brutal force, but by attacking the heart of the problem, that is mental health. Sometimes a simpler approach can be the most significant. The use of marijuana should not be a crime because that only causes more violence between people. Money spent on monitoring drugs is about seventy-five billion dollars a year. Something that has not come close to stopping is the use of marijuana. If anything, more people smoke the plant than ever before.
Each year fifty million people still try marijuana at least once with no hostile effects. This money is not spent correctly. The government could produce another income with high taxes from the sale of marijuana. Eighteen million people use marijuana once a month despite drug laws, and large amounts of people think it is acceptable. Even with all of the chemicals in marijuana, it is still of the safest drugs. Alcohol and cigarettes account for ninty-five percent of drug related deaths in the United States while marijuana only accounts for about one percent. Marijuana will eventually be legal for both recreational and medicinal use because the US economy can gain significant benefits from legalization. Business owners will create an influx of jobs for dispensary stores, farming, and packaging. This will reduce street and gang disputes relating to marijuana sales. Marijuana will be legalized one day because it has been dealt an unfair hand by society, and is justifiably safer than most know it to be.
People during the 70’s viewed marijuana much more differently than it is today. New medical studies approved by Twenty-Seven states, and consequential turn-out of those convicted of using the most frequently used drug in the world, is building the United States change their judgement on the subject. Marijuana is one of the most commonly abused drugs around the world. Categorized by the US Drug Enforcement Agency as a schedule I drug, this means it has an upper chance of being maltreated. Those who are in support of legalizing marijuana, do not understand marijuana use have negative effects. Whether you call it Hemp, Pot, or Weed; it does not matter. It is still Cannabis Sativa, indicia, or cannabis for short. It is still illegal. The use of marijuana as an intoxicant in the United States developed a conflict of public worry in the nineteen-thirties. Regulatory laws have been passed in nineteen thirty-seven.
Criminal penalties have been instituted for possession, and sale of the drug. In today’s rapidly shifting modern world, there is an increasing need for individualism and self-liberation that is largely due to society’s discontent with authoritative figures who conjure outwardly harsh laws. What failed to be realized is if these laws were never into action, there would be a vast range of problematic situations. With many people illegally using marijuana in the sixties and seventies, the question was whether marijuana ought to be legalized. These protests brought about what was dubbed the new Prohibition, which made way for many laws to be passed. These laws would severely punished those who were associated with marijuana practice. To regulate society and its behavior, a law to block a great strain in American kept it from being widely popular. It is obvious that the people need these laws to prevent a large drug problem from getting bigger.
The research and analytical observation of the decriminalization concept, I have based my findings on moral standings to arrive at the conclusion that legalization of marijuana would produce irreversible, negative effects on society. One of the reasons is that marijuana is beginning to take the place of alcohol by claiming itself as the new social drug of modern day society. Even if the government were to allow decriminalization to occur, it would still be approximately unmanageable to remove all illegal marijuana for various reasons that will be further explained later on. The negative characteristic is that making marijuana legal will result in another addition of harmful, legal drugs that will cause physical damage to the body if abused.
