Marijauna

Should Cannabis be Legal in the United States?

Prescription drugs kill about 100,000 people in the world each year. Do you know how many deaths are caused by the use of Marijuana in any way? "There are no deaths from cannabis use. Anywhere. You can't find one," said Dr. Lester Grinspoon, professor emeritus at Harvard Medical School. Marijuana has been one of the most misunderstood herbal medicines in todays culture. With todays culture turning to natural remedies including marijuana should be included. It treats many medical conditions that society has overlooked, due to the point surrounding it. Society needs to put aside stereotypical ideas that it a drug that makes you high and realize the full potential of a natural grown flower that is used to treat many conditions including cancer patients.
Under the Controlled Substances Act of 1970, marijuana is classified as a Schedule I drug because it has "a high potential for abuse." This means that the perception is that people get hooked on marijuana and become "potheads," and it begins to dominate their lives. This without a doubt occurs in some cases. But it also happens in the case of alcohol--and alcohol is perfectly legal.
Addiction researchers have consistently reported that marijuana is far less addictive than alcohol based on a number of factors. In particular, alcohol use can result in significant and potentially fatal physical withdrawal, whereas marijuana has not been found to produce any symptoms of physical withdrawal. Those who use alcohol are also much more likely to develop dependence and build tolerance.
One chemical found in marijuana, called cannabidiol, prevents cancer from spreading, researchers at California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco reported in 2007. Cannabidiol stops cancer by turning off a gene called Id-1. Cancer cells make more copies of this gene than non-cancerous cells, and it helps them spread through the body. Marijuana also may be able to slow the progression of Alzheimer's disease, a study by Kim Janda of the Scripps Research Institute suggests. The study found that THC, the active chemical in marijuana, slows the formation of amyloid plaques by blocking the enzyme in the brain that makes them. These plaques kill brain cells and cause Alzheimers.

Replacing marijuana prohibition with a system of taxation and regulation similar to that used for alcoholic beverages would produce combined savings and tax revenues of between $10 billion and $14 billion per year, finds a June 2005 report by Dr. Jeffrey Miron, visiting professor of economics at Harvard University. Replacing marijuana prohibition with a system of legal regulation would save approximately $7.7 billion in government expenditures on prohibition enforcement — $2.4 billion at the federal level and $5.3 billion at the state and local levels. Carl Davis, senior analyst at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy said, “We don’t know the size of the marijuana market right now, and we certainly don’t know what would happen to the price and the demand for marijuana under different levels of legalization, but we do know that legalization would lead to a positive revenue impact on the income and sales tax side." According to a 2010 study from Cato, legalizing marijuana would generate $8.7 billion in federal and state tax revenue annually. So why should cannabis be legal? It treats multiple medical conditions, it would help bring the U.S. economy out of the gutter and is without a question more effective, healthier and useful than many other legal medicines on the market.