Research has been published in favor of legalizing marijuana. The legalization of marijuana is a political issue that has continued to surface for decades. There is countrywide support lobbying for reinstating the right to use this natural product. A large majority of this country’s population refuses to accept the United States government’s decision to prohibit citizens from enjoying the benefits that this organically grown herb provides. In my paper I will research and have knowledge on the legalization and political issues about marijuana.
Most Americans do not want to spend scarce public funds incarcerating nonviolent marijuana offenders, at a cost of $23,000 per year. Politicians must reconsider our country’s priorities and attach more importance to combating violent crime than targeting marijuana smokers. Marijuana prohibition costs taxpayers at least $7. 5 billion annually. This is an enormous waste of scarce federal dollars that should be used to target violent crime. Marijuana prohibition makes no exception for the medical use of marijuana.
The tens of thousands of eriously ill Americans who presently use marijuana as a therapeutic agent to alleviate symptoms of cancer, AIDS, glaucoma, or multiple sclerosis risk arrest and jail to obtain and use their medication (Grinspoon and Bakalar). Americans, it turns out, aren’t conflicted in their attitude toward marijuana. They want it illegal but not really enforced. A Time/CNN poll last week found that only 34% want pot to be totally legalized (the percentage has almost doubled since 1986).
But a vast majority have become mellow about official loopholes: 80% think it’s O. K. to dispense pot for medical purposes, and 72% think people caught with it for recreational use should get off with only a fine (Time Magazine, Oct 2002). Between 1978 and 1996, 34 states passed laws recognizing marijuana’s therapeutic value (Wesner). Most recently, voters in two states — Arizona and California — passed laws allowing for the medical use of marijuana under a physician’s supervision.
Yet, states are severely limited in their ability to implement their medical use laws because of the federal prohibition of marijuana. America tried alcohol prohibition between 1919 and 1931, but discovered that the crime and violence associated with prohibition was more damaging than the evil sought to be prohibited. With tobacco, America has learned over the last decade that education is the most effective way to discourage use. Yet, America fails to apply these lessons to marijuana policy.
By stubbornly defining all marijuana smoking as criminal, including that which involves adults smoking in the privacy of their own homes, we are wasting police and prosecutorial resources, clogging ourts, filling costly and scarce jail and prison space, and needlessly wrecking the lives and careers of genuinely good citizens. Marijuana legalization offers an important advantage over decriminalization in that it allows for legal distribution and taxation of cannabis.
In the absence of taxation, the free market price of legal marijuana would be extremely low, on the order of five to ten cents per joint. In terms of intoxicating potential, a joint is equivalent to at least $1 or $2 worth of alcohol, the price at which cannabis is currently sold in the Netherlands. The easiest way to hold the price at this level under legalization would be by an excise tax on commercial sales. An examination of the external costs imposed by cannabis users on the rest of society suggests that a “harmfulness tax” of $. 0 – $1 per joint is appropriate. It can be estimated that excise taxes in this range would rise between $2. 2 and $6. 4 billion per year. Altogether, legalization would save the taxpayers around $8 – $16 billion, not counting the economic benefits of hemp agriculture and other spin-off industries.
Personally, I believe that marijuana should be legalized for medicinal uses, but I do not think that it will ever totally legalized in the United States. For one, no one has died directly from Delta-9-Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) poisoning, mostly because a 160-lb. erson would have to smoke roughly 900 joints in a sitting to reach a lethal dose (Merrit). I think that it is a travesty that millions of suffering Americans can’t be prescribed marijuana. Many studies conducted over the years have shown marijuana’s medicinal benefits. I don’t believe that marijuana will ever be legalized because our governments fear of marijuana. Even though most people in politics have smoked marijuana before (my opinion), marijuana is just considered taboo and will never be legalized.
The government fears that people who were prescribed marijuana would begin to try and sell it. In my opinion this is just ludicrous. If someone were being prescribed marijuana, (there are around 10 people currently and a waiting list of about a thousand) they would never be stupid enough to try and sell it. They would be under so much security and scrutiny that I don’t think the thought of selling the marijuana would cross people’s minds. Also the government thinks that legalizing marijuana would send the wrong message to children.
I think that this is just another bland statement for the government to stand behind. If someone was prescribed marijuana they could either smoke it away from children or, if the child was mature enough, explain the medicinal values and why they were smoking marijuana. People have even gone so far as to state that the government has sabotaged the marijuana research. I wouldn’t put this past the government, but I don’t think that it is likely they would do this.
