Mathews
ENGL 1311L-03
20 March 2013
Legalization of Marijuana The use and existence of Marijuana is not something new for anyone. Marijuana has been used in several ways for over many years. Marijuana has always being around, but why is it that suddenly people started to care about Marijuana? Now that the places where Marijuana is legal are increasing, people have started to think about whether the legalization of Marijuana is good or bad. The Cannabis plant, which is where the Marijuana comes from, has been used for personal purposes, and it has a long background all around the world; it has also a lot of medical benefits. In places like Canada, Marijuana has been helpful to keep the economy on float, but in some other places like Mexico, it has started a war that seams endless. Marijuana has several kinds of nicknames like pot, weed, Mary Jane, grass, herb, and many others. What is Marijuana precisely? According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, “Marijuana is a greenish-gray mixture of the dried, shredded leaves, stems, seeds, and flowers of Cannabis sativa—the hemp plant” ("Marijuana Abuse"). Marijuana is today known as a recreational drug, which is being smoked by all kinds of people with the purpose of making the people feel more relaxed, relieving their tensions, or to simply heightening people’s creativity. Marijuana has being around people all the time, but with different purposes. The first reference that there is about Marijuana was in China; the emperor Shen Nung used it as a medication for diseases like rheumatism, gout, and malaria. Marijuana was also used in China to make textiles with the hemp. Marijuana is also mentioned in a Hindu sacred text as “Sacred Grass,” and it was used with medicinal and ritual purposes. Marijuana was also smoked a lot by Muslims because alcohol is banned in the Koran, and then Marijuana came to America, as Narconon International (“History of Marijuana”). Marijuana is legal in many