Legalization of Marijuana

This is a little something i was working on for school. Let me know what you think.

Individuals are going to continue to smoke it, despite the fact that it’s illegal, so why not change the laws to benefit everybody? This is the question that many Americans that smoke marijuana ask today. The United States could benefit from legalizing marijuana. Not every effect that marijuana has is 100 percent negative; it can aid individuals as well. That is why marijuana should be made legal in the United States, at least on a trial basis.
Marijuana is known by many names in the United States and across the world; names like cannabis, pot, weed, and green just to name a few. It is a psychoactive drug that can be smoked to give the smoker various feelings and effects, most of them being mental. People use this drug for various reasons. Some claim that it helps them forget the stresses of their daily lives, and others just enjoy the effects it has on your body and mind. Whatever the reason, pot has become one of the most widely used drugs in America, legal or illegal. Marijuana is the third most widely used recreational drug, only behind alcohol and tobacco.
It is interesting that in America, alcohol and tobacco are legal but marijuana is illegal. “The smoking of cannabis, even long-term, is not harmful to health…” (Lancet). Alcohol and tobacco do more damage to the body then pot does, and they both contribute to a lot more deaths in the United States than marijuana. It is impossible to overdose on marijuana and die, unlike alcohol, which can give you alcohol poisoning and kill you. And smoking cigarettes does a lot more damage to the body then pot. Heavy weed smokers are proven to have less lung damage compared to heavy tobacco smokers, and the cannabinoids in marijuana may be protecting smokers from developing a condition like emphysema. According to drugwarfacts.org, the number of tobacco related deaths is approximately 435,000, or more than 18% of the total amount of deaths in America. The number of alcohol related deaths reaches 85,000, or a little more than 3% of the deaths in America. The number of marijuana related deaths in America was extremely low, zero. There were no pot related deaths in America, nor has there ever been one since it is impossible to overdose on marijuana. In fact, just the opposite has been proven by recent studies. Marijuana has been shown to aid individuals with certain pains and diseases, such as glaucoma. There are also current studies being conducted to determine the effectiveness of pot against proven helpers for pain such as morphine.
Making marijuana legal could benefit the United States economically as well, in more ways than one. First, the legalization of marijuana would reduce the money used in the war on drugs. The government spends over $16 billion in the war on drugs a year, approximately $600 a second. If pot were legal, a portion of that money would remain in the pocket of the United States and could be put to better use. It could be used to build schools, libraries, and other countless facilities the United States need, rather than fighting an unwinnable war (Tuccille). The money spent on conducting drug tests, and the repercussions from them, could also be avoided by making weed legal. In Arizona, Hawaii, Missouri, and Oklahoma, bills have been passed that would result in a loss of benefits for individuals that tested positive for marijuana. Most of the nation lives in fear of being jailed or losing their jobs because of marijuana use. Legalizing the drug would put a large portion of Americans at ease. Also, taxpayers would no longer have to pay for people imprisoned for possession of marijuana charges. In 2008 alone, 874,863 people were arrested for charges stemming from marijuana, both trafficking/sale and possession. There are people in the United States doing way worse than smoking marijuana and they deserve to be in jail. Another economic benefit to legalizing cannabis would be its worth as a cash crop. Americans spend over $10 billion on marijuana a year. If it were a legal substance, the United States would be able to import and export pot and would have a very large source of revenue. Not only would that make money here in the United States but all over the world because every country in the world uses marijuana, whether its legal or not.
The D.E.A. or Drug Enforcement Agency has a very different view on marijuana. They feel it is illegal for a reason and should stay as is. One of the main problems they see with pot is that it is a possible “gateway drug.” The D.E.A. believe that smoking marijuana leads individuals to try more extreme drugs like cocaine, crack, and heroin. The University of Pittsburg conducted a 12-year study and came with the results that marijuana is not a gateway drug. The study showed that teens that used pot before alcohol and tobacco were no more likely to develop a substance use disorder than people who used alcohol and tobacco before marijuana or individuals on pot alone. The main reason individuals in the D.E.A. think of pot as a gateway drug is because pot is much easier to get access to than cocaine and other, harsher drugs. An individual trying to get the harsher drugs will undoubtedly encounter someone who deals marijuana first, and will almost always buy some. Another problem the Drug Enforcement Agency sees with marijuana is the possibility for dependency. The truth is to become dependent on marijuana, a lot of different things need to happen. For example, the individual needs to be almost completely cut off from all other activities, including family, friends, work, and plenty of other daily activities. Most individuals do not allow this to happen. Also, to be dependent, there needs to be a constant need to get high, which cannot be achieved in the individual has other things occupying time in their lives. Studies started years ago on the dependence of marijuana show results that prove the opposite of what the D.E.A. believes to be true. These results show that many Americans that smoked in the early teen and early adult years ceased smoking marijuana by the time they reached 30. Had those individuals been dependent on pot, it would have been very difficult to quit using it without any withdraw symptoms, which is what the study says happened.
Marijuana has been decriminalized in a few states, but made legal in none as of 2009. Many American citizens are pushing to legalize pot, especially due to the fact that it could improve so much about American society, and harm so little. If marijuana was made legal, nobody would face any negative effects, not the patients with glaucoma that would not feel the symptoms as much, not the individuals who previously would have lost their jobs from a failed drug test, and especially not the government, who would have million, if not billions of extra dollars in their pocket from the legalization of marijuana.