Legalization of Cannabis in United States - Essay Example

The report said, “…we have concluded that society should seek to discourage use, while concentrating its attention on the prevention and treatment of heavy and very heavy use. The Commission feels that the criminalization of possession of marihuana for personal use is socially self-defeating as a means of achieving this objective” (National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse cited in McWay). Decriminalization of the cannabis primarily means replacement of penal sanctions with civil penalties that are significantly flexible than the period of imprisonment (Roffman and Stephens 328).

Cannabis is a drug with a lot of uses and very little risks, so it should be legalized in the US. Medical purposes are the strongest reason why cannabis should be legalized. It is possible to use the cannabis for the treatment of myriad of diseases. Cancer chemotherapy causes such symptoms as vomiting and nausea in the patient. If cannabis is used for the treatment, its active ingredient THC helps alleviate the pretreatment anxiety and minimizes the nausea and vomiting. The patient loses lean mass and suffers from a low appetite in the AIDS.

Selecting the cannabis for the treatment improves the patient’s appetite. In the case of muscle spasms, cannabis is useful because of its ability to reduce the spasms and ease the incontinence of the bowel. In addition to that, the cannabis also relieves the depression of the patient. Glaucoma is a sort of blindness caused by the build-up of pressure in the eye. Cannabis can be used as a treatment to release the pressure inside the eye. Cannabis also helps treat the asthma by opening up the lungs.

Legalizing the cannabis will not only provide the patients with a legitimate way to get rid of the disease, but will also enable the scientists and researchers to conduct research on the cannabis in order to unveil more knowledge about their medicinal uses. Legalization of the cannabis means treatment of the drug abuse not as a criminal issue, but as a medical problem. The US government has wasted a lot of money in taking measures to keep the cannabis from being available in the market in the past.

According to an estimate, the US government incurs a total cost of about $10 billion on an annual basis in her efforts to make the country free of cannabis. On the other hand, the State of California produces the legalized medicinal cannabis for a total revenue of no more than $14 billion every year (“Pro's of Marijuana”). Therefore, if the US government legalizes the cannabis, she can tax the revenues and would gain additional money to use on the social well-being. This money can be used both to make the people aware of the negative effects of the consumption of cannabis on the health and also for arranging the treatment of the diseases caused by its consumption.

The US has once seen the negative consequences of banning alcohol in the country. In the 1920s, selling and buying alcohol in the US was officially banned. This put the control in the hands of the Mafia that both produced the alcohol and supplied it to the consumers. The corner drug dealers in the 1990s have followed the Mafia of the 1920s in the same footsteps. The unregulated trade of the black-market with the legalization of the cannabis would help reduce the number of yearly suicides and natural deaths in the US and would also cause a decline in the violence in the country.

Presently, a significant population of prisoners in the US has been jailed