Legal Status of Marihuana in the USA - Essay Example

Legal Status of Marihuana in the USA At the beginning of the 21st century, legalization of marijuana is one of topical questions discussed in media and political circles. The main problem with legalization of marijuana is that it is not difficult to justify laws against intoxication, at least intoxication in public, but it is extremely difficult to control consumption and risky behavior caused by drug users. Legalized marijuana will help the government and police to control consumption, price level and collect taxes, but it will not solve the problem of drug abuse and black market operations. Illegal status of marijuana benefits neither government and medical professionals nor patients who use it for medical purposes. Several decades of prohibition of marijuana proves that its illegal status does not work, so the state should legalize drugs and instead teach people to use them responsibly and properly. Legal status of marihuana will benefit the society and the state as it will solve the problem of criminal responsibility and black market operations. Medical marijuana is a point to consider. Some states have legalized medical usage of marijuana and do not panelize patients who have a doctor's recommendation. These states are .Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, California, Hawaii, Maine, Washington, Nevada, Oregon and Maryland. In the case of marijuana, especially of smoked marijuana, the scientific difficulties are compounded by the fact that the substance has a recognizable psychoactive effect (Belio 2007). A herbal mixture similar in taste and aroma to marijuana might not produce the psychoactive effect and make many of those who are test subjects reasonably sure they are not receiving actual marijuana, which could skew perceptions and the results of any test. On the other hand, the main problem is that politicians and moralists speak about two opposite issues: medical usage of marijuana and its legal status. Following the Food and Drug Administration: the fact that “marijuana is a Medicine” does "not support the use of smoked marijuana for medical purposes" (Ber 2006, p. 49). Also, there is insufficient evidence to justify medical prescription of marijuana. Marijuana smoke does contain many of the same harmful substances as tobacco smoke does, including known carcinogens, and there is laboratory and cellular research indicating that marijuana can cause cellular damage and disorders (Nadelmann, 2004. Medical Marijuana 2007). Legal status of medical marijuana will benefit the government and allows to collect taxes, control black market and illegal operations. Crop production uncertainties are just one perturbing factor in gauging the amount of illegal drugs being produced. Medical marijuana will create certain problem for society and the state. The main problem is that marijuana policy does not only affect marijuana users, but also the rest of society. Criminalizing marijuana use on the one hand can lead to higher costs of law enforcement and a black market, while decriminalizing could lead to public disturbance caused by unwanted marijuana use in public. Similar to alcohol and other illicit drugs, prohibition does not work and does young from its usage (Nadelmann, 2004). It is possible to oppose these arguments stating that legal status of marijuana will worsen the problem of drug addition and give free access of wide target audience to marijuana. Fines, cautions, probation, exemption from punishment and counseling are favored by most justice systems. It is important to keep in mind that cannabis policies at all levels of government could affect the prevalence of cannabis use and the related social consequences. While this is the case for the cocaine and heroin market, the cannabis market is not associated with violence (Belio 2007). Legal status of medical marijuana will benefit the government and allows to collect taxes, control black market and illegal operations. Crop production uncertainties are just one perturbing factor in gauging the amount of illegal drugs being produced. The alkaloid content of any given precursor plant is not a given; it varies according to cultivation practices, climatic conditions and microzones, plant subspecies, and harvesting practices. One must make estimates about that content. In the case of coca leaves, the cocaine content is known to vary widely, from about 0.25 percent to 1.5 percent, thereby throwing a large "wild card" into estimates of actual cocaine derived from the estimated crop production, itself subject to numerous assumptions (Belio 39). Moreover, the leaves, whatever their recoverable alkaloid content at the time of picking, quickly (within a matter of days) lose much of their potency. Any delay in processing the leaves (which might arise, for example, if a successful trafficker interdiction program happens to be underway) can therefore add additional uncertainties to the production figures (Nadelmann, 2004). One of the ways in which cannabis policy has an effect on non-users is through tax money. For various countries, estimates are made on the basis of total law enforcement costs and the share of enforcing cannabis laws in the total. In contrast, illegal status of medical marijuana becomes a heavy burden for police including high costs and workload. The authors make rough estimates of the involved costs on the basis of police workload, number of drug offences, average time to carry out and administer an arrest, etc. They estimate the total costs of a single case on the basis of: the stop and search, the arrest, conveying back to the station, booking in, repeat search, placing the arrestee in a cell, compiling files and taking photographs, DNA and fingerprints (Medical Marijuana. 2007). The development of psychiatry contributed greatly to the acceptance of marijuana usage as a disease, and the theory that marijuana consumption is the result of emotional problems is still generally accepted. But recently the theory has been advanced that grug addiction, while perhaps the result of emotional and personality disorders in some cases, may also have a physical basis. Each person is an individual biochemically. This means that people differ in terms of blood composition, enzyme levels, gland activity, response to chemicals, nutritional needs, etc. Some people have to go to the bathroom more often than others. Some people perspire a lot; some people do not. Some people are allergic to penicillin, or to pollen, or to milk, or to grass. Some people attract mosquitoes; others do not. One person can stumble into a patch of poison ivy and break out into a rash; another person can do the same thing and have no reaction whatsoever. In recent years, it has occurred to some doctors and medical researchers that the fact of biochemical individuality should be taken into account when trying to find the reasons for drug addiction (Richard and Trevino 2002). When a chemical substance affects a person, it is because this chemical substance interacts with the substances and mechanisms of that person's body. If the same chemical has a different effect on two different people, it must be due to their biochemical differences. Research into this theory is still in progress, but at some point in the future scientists may be able to isolate particular bodily substances and mechanisms that contribute to drug addiction. They may find that drug addiction is a result of individual body chemistry, for some people at least. When this happens, the need to smoke marijuana is beyond the control of the individual, who can want to stop this practice mentally, but whose body demands marijuana. The drug user cannot be helped unless he or she wants help (“The War on Drugs: Fighting” 2001). This is one of the most frustrating facts about drug addition. Arguments, coercion, even love cannot force a problem drug user to seek treatment. The reasons drug users do seek help are as numerous as the problem drug users themselves. Some have to vomit blood in order to become sufficiently frightened to seek help. Others must hurt someone they love severely before they recognize their problem. others have to experience the shame of passing out or making fools of themselves in a public place before they will admit to drug addiction (Belio 2007). I suppose that marijuana should be legalized for medical purposes only because it allows to relief some types of pain including sclerosis, cancer and AIDS. Also, marijuana is used, not only for a variety of purely physical ailments, but as a treatment for psychological problems as well. In the 1950s recommended uses for marijuana included the treatment of gout, rheumatism, tetanus, opiate withdrawal symptoms, withdrawal, loss of appetite, convulsions, depression, delirium tremens, insanity, and asthma. Legal status of marijuana will help patients to avoid other narcotics and relief pain. "Medical marijuana" should be subjected to the same scientific scrutiny as any drug proposed for use in medical therapy, rather than made legal for medical use by popular will” (Belio 2007, p. 19). There are no lasting ill effects from the acute use of marijuana and no fatalities have ever been reported. Prevention education is the main tool which will help the state to solve the problem of drug abuse and intoxication problems. Drug-control efforts to affect consumption directly include treatment for addiction, prevention education, enhancement of user penalties, and engineered cultural change Treatment is thought to reduce the "contagion" effect of users who, by example and by recruiting clientele in order to finance their own drug habits, bring more people into the consuming market. Prevention education is thought to dissuade youngsters from experimenting with drugs. Enhancement of user penalties is thought to deter casual or first-time users who would have much to lose from an indiscretionary act. Cultural change, insofar as it can be engineered, is thought to contribute to the development of a new ethos that would eschew people's need for "crutches" such as psychoactive drugs (“The War on Drugs: Fighting …” 2001). Disaggregation of consumption and aspects of consumption by subpopulations defined by criteria other than consumption level will also be required. For example, many studies of mortality relate to specific sex and age groups. In order to calculate attributable risks, the distribution of consumption within similarly constructed groups will require to be estimated. The law, meanwhile, was having great difficulty enforcing Prohibition. There were never enough federal agents to do the job, and local police departments and governments all too often were willing to look the other way in exchange for bribes (Richard and Trevino 2002). Very few speakeasies were unknown to the law. Many were such fly-by-night operations that by the time a raid against them was organized they had moved to other quarters. Some of the larger speakeasies had agreements with law enforcement agencies and were not bothered as long as they kept their operations peaceful. Plenty of arrests were made, but more might have been made if the courts and jails had been able to handle them. No preparations had been made for the violators of the Prohibition law before it went into effect. As a result, within three years the population of the federal prisons had doubled and the courts were overrun with thousands of cases, which they did not have the time or the judges to handle (Belio 2007). The information mentioned above suggests that only public policies and prevention education are the most effective tool to control marijuana consumption and drug abuse. Attempts to establish the costs to society of marihuana consumption are not uncommon, in the form of calculations of revenues (for example, excise taxation) and costs to the state of dealing with the effects of consumption. The private costs and benefits to the individual are generally left out of account, while the public or social costs are based on estimates of the various forms of social and health damage resulting from consumption (Richard and Trevino 2002). If it is difficult to estimate attributable mortality from a particular condition, it is in general even more difficult to estimate attributable morbidity, and to attempt to do so for all conditions treated by the National Health Service is optimistic indeed. The last point emphasises that estimating total costs or benefits to society is essentially inadequate as a guide to action. Estimates of the effects of policy interventions on the quantities on either side of the account are of much more importance, but in the present state of knowledge are extremely difficult to produce. References Berg, J. (2006). Smokescreen: The FDA Struggles to Keep Control. The Hastings Center Report, 36 (4), 49. Belio, J. (2007). The Benefits of Marijuana: Physical, Psychological & Spiritual. Lifeservices Press; 3nd Rev. edition. Medical Marijuana. (2007). http://clickonium.com/colorectal-cancer.net/html/marijuana.htm Nadelmann, E.A. (2004). An End to Marijuana Prohibition: The Drive to Legalize Picks Up. National Review, 56 (13), July 12, 28. Richard, A.J., Trevino, R.A. (2002). Attitudes towards Drug Legalization among Drug Users. American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse, 28 (1), 91. The War on Drugs: Fighting Crime or Wasting Time? (2001). American Criminal Law Review, 38, p. 1537. Read More