English 1301
February 25, 2013
Just Legalize It Very few things disgust me more than when I hear about people or some of my friends getting arrested for the possession of marijuana. Although I do not use it anymore, I strongly believe that it should be legalized throughout the nation and regulated by the U.S. government. There are many reasons why I believe it should be legalized. It would save the government billions of dollars for one, and if they tax it, it would make them even more money. The first and most basic reason is there is no good reason for it not to be legal. The effects of marijuana have been extremely obscured when presented to the public. If you have never tried it than you may believe that you hallucinate and see pretty colors. This is not true at all. Marijuana does not make you hallucinate or significantly slow down your reaction time. Unlike alcohol, marijuana is not dangerous and does not come with significant long-term effects unless of course significantly abused and overused. The harmful effects of marijuana are significantly weaker than those of tobacco and alcohol. Studies by the British Medical Association have proven that nicotine is far more addictive than marijuana.
Prohibition does not work. From my personal experiences, I have found it much easier to obtain marijuana, the illegal substance, than alcohol, the legal substance. This is because alcohol is regulated throughout the country and therefore kept away from kids. Drug dealers do not care about how old a buyer is as long as they have money. As long as marijuana is illegal, there will be kids going to drug dealers, who are not the ideal people our children should be around. Most of these drug dealers sell drugs other than marijuana, which they then influence our kids to buy. Most of those drugs are very dangerous, addictive and easy to overdose on. It is impossible to overdose on marijuana and there have been 0 deaths due to marijuana usage. This is one