Marijuana Should Be Legalized - Essay Example

Marijuana

The use of marijuana was first recorded almost five thousand years ago. The plant was never popular until the last century where it started gaining popularity with anti-war and prohibition movements. In the recent past, the legalization of marijuana has been a controversial topic in the United States of America. However, there should not be any issue regarding its use and legalization. It should be legalized. The government once tried to prohibit alcohol, but the efforts proved futile, and marijuana is just on the way of proving the same. It is a relatively safe drug compared with other illegal drugs and legal drugs such as tobacco and alcohol. Therefore, this paper argues that marijuana should be legalized.

In the modern united states, there are different reasons why marijuana I s equally frowned and illegal. Most of these reasons are not only ill-informed but also irrational. Similarly, the rest of the reasons are underlying and irrelevant to the marijuana users and their safety (Huang et al., 18). However, marijuana presents many benefits to individuals and society and, therefore, should be legalized. For instance, it will eliminate, by a greater proportion, underground consumers and drug dealers, and it will positively impact the common taxpayer.

Economists observe that marijuana will provide the country with a lot of financial benefits. More than 300 economists have estimated that legalizing marijuana will save the country more than $13.7 billion annually. More than $7.7 billion will be saved since the law enforcement officers will not have to enforce the current prohibition. The government will also earn more than $6 billion if it introduced a tax on marijuana the same way it does with tobacco and alcohol (Kilmer, 58). It is also important to note that legalizing marijuana will result in a lot of employment opportunities to the American people as far as the production and marketing of marijuana is concerned.

Marijuana has medicinal value as well. Prohibiting marijuana would mean that the United States is abandoning human life. Studies have demonstrated that marijuana is the most therapeutically active and essential substance ever discovered by humankind. Several scientists have conducted experiments as far as the properties of marijuana are concerned. The findings of these studies have demonstrated that marijuana possesses significant properties essential for the manufacturing of drugs (Furlow, 385). Traced from the ancient Indians, marijuana has shown to have psychoactive properties that make it used by doctors in the treatment of various illnesses and ailments. The modern scientific experiments in the United States support this argument. Studies have found that marijuana has proved to be effective in treating headaches and gastrointestinal disorders. It is also used as a pain reliever during childbirth. It has also been proved that the use of marijuana reduces pain, especially with patients undergoing chemotherapy, and those suffering from cancer and glaucoma.

Marijuana is an essential drug when it comes to AIDS patients since it reduces the loss of appetite, vomiting, and nausea. Another study found that marijuana is associated with glaucoma eye pressure relief (Minamide, 18). Also, it plays a significant role as far as treating multiple sclerosis is concerned. It also reduces diseases causing body tremors, reduces spasticity, muscle pain, and treating epilepsy. Simply put, ailing and ill people will be denied a medicine that can alter their lives if marijuana is illegalized. Therefore, it makes no sense to illegalize such a potentially beneficial drug even when tobacco and alcohol are associated with thousands of deaths annually.

Marijuana is safer in every way possible as compared to alcohol. Alcohol is a toxic drug and destroys healthy organs and cells. This is a side effect of alcohol, which results in almost 35,000 deaths every year in the United States. Heavy alcohol consumption results in a whopping 4% of all deaths in the world. This proportion of deaths is more than those resulting from violence, tuberculosis, or AIDS. Contrary, marijuana's active properties – which are known as cannabinoids – are fairly non-toxic to human health. Marijuana is not capable of causing fatal overdose like alcohol. In fact, studies have shown that the use of marijuana is indirectly related to injury and aggression as compared to alcohol, which is strongly associated with violate and injury. There is also a clear distinction between marijuana and tobacco. However, there is a false myth around the world, stating that five cigarettes equal to one marijuana joint. This was a false conclusion related to Dr. Donald Tashkin’s study (Tashkin and Michael, 596). This myth is debunked by evidence from various studies. For instance, regular use of marijuana did not result in lung cancer and compared to regular smoking of tobacco. Also, there are no people who succumb to marijuana use, and there is no evidence that marijuana causes any form of cancer.

Marijuana is illegal today because many people and corporations in the United States have invested a lot of money, pride, and jobs in fighting drugs, and marijuana happens to be one of them. There is no room for the government to turn back. There is a concerted effort of sensitizing the American people that marijuana is not good for taxpayers. Billions of dollars have been spent fighting drugs and specifically marijuana (Pacula et al., 397). This money would appear wasted if it were spent on a legalized course anyway. The United States government is in an awkward position as an investor. It is irrational for the government to just spend its money, jobs, and pride devoid of being pressured from the outside. Were it not for politics. The government would never abandon such a huge investment.

There are, indeed, many voices to be listened to concerning counter-arguments to marijuana legalization. However, many of these arguments lack logical merit. For instance, there is a common argument that claims that ‘It is morally wrong to get high.' It is the theist of some sort that says such words. What they fail to realize is that morality is not universal – it can vary from person to person and from religion to religion. When there are no set moral standards, nobody, including the government, has the right to enforce some morals to another person especially when he is the one that bears the burden of the consequences of his actions.

There is also a classic argument that, ‘Marijuana is addictive’ (Danovitch, 91). Even though this claim may be true, it is not as true as implied. The addiction of marijuana and cigarettes cannot be compared. One can become an addict of marijuana the same way people are addicted to sex, food or any other thing on life – marijuana is only addictive psychologically. Other people argue that marijuana is a gateway drug and should remain illegalized (91). This assumption begs for a question whether if marijuana is a gateway drug it would have little effect than that if legalized. When people are compelled to crawl into underground market for illegal substance, it becomes a gateway for more illegal drugs to that extent. The only way of dismantling underground market of illegal drugs is by legalizing marijuana.

In conclusion, the use of marijuana is not harmful as depicted by the government. Unfortunately, government sponsors use a lot of scary tactic on various media outlets. They also use wrong and misleading information to achieve their objective. Scientists have demonstrated that marijuana can play a significant role in helping an individual and the society in terms of medicine, economic growth, and physical health. There are no long-term effects in health issues associated to marijuana that can hinder the individual wellbeing. However, the potential outcomes have the capacity of improving the quality of life of millions of ailing and sick people not just in the United States but also the world. Unfortunately, until marijuana is accepted and recognized for its benefits in the society and to the individual and legalized, innocent Americans will continue to suffer in the hands of the police, harassed, and arrested.

Work Cited

Danovitch, Itai. "Sorting through the science on marijuana: facts, fallacies, and implications for legalization." McGeorge L. Rev. 43 (2012): 91.

Furlow, Bryant. "Recreational cannabis legalisation in the USA outpaces research into health effects." The Lancet Respiratory Medicine 5.5 (2017): 385-386.

Huang, Yu-Hui Jenny, et al. "An epidemiologic review of marijuana and cancer: an update." Cancer Epidemiology and Prevention Biomarkers 24.1 (2015): 15-31.

Kilmer, Beau. Marijuana legalization, government revenues, and public budgets. RAND Corporation, 2016.

Minamide, Elaine, ed. Medical Marijuana. Greenhaven Publishing LLC, 2006.

Pacula, Rosalie Liccardo, and Rosanna Smart. "Medical marijuana and marijuana legalization." Annual review of clinical psychology 13 (2017): 397-419.

Tashkin, Donald P., and Michael D. Roth. "Pulmonary effects of inhaled cannabis smoke." The American journal of drug and alcohol abuse 45.6 (2019): 596-609.