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Case for Legalizing Marijuana
What Is Marijuana?
Marijuana, a drug obtained from dried and crumpled parts of the
ubiquitous hemp plant Canabis sativa (or Cannabis indica). Smoked by
rolling in tobacco paper or placing in a pipe. It is also otherwise
consumed worldwide by an estimated 200,000,000 persons for pleasure, an
escape from reality, or relaxation. Marijuana is known by a variety of
names such as kif (Morocco), dagga (South Africa), and bhang (India).
Common in the United States, marijuana is called pot, grass, weed, Mary
Jane, bones, etc. The main active principle of cannabis is
tetrahydrocannabinol. The potency of its various forms ranges from a weak
drink consumed in India to the highly potent hashish. The following
consists of pure cannabis resin. Marijuana is not a narcotic and is not
mentally or physically addicting drug. One can use mild cannabis
preparations such as marijuana in small amounts for years without physical
or mental deterioration. Marijuana serves to diminish inhibitions and acts
as an euphoriant. Only once in a while will it produce actual
hallucinations. More potent preparations of cannabis such as hashish can
induce psychedelic experiences identical to those observed after ingestion
of potent hallucinogens such as LSD. Some who smoke marijuana feel no
effects; others feel relaxed and sociable, tend to laugh a great deal, and
have a profound loss of the sense of time. Characteristically, those under
the influence of marijuana show incoordination and impaired ability to
perform skilled acts. Still others experience a wide range of emotions
including feelings of perception, fear, insanity, happiness, love and
anger. Although marijuana is not addicting, it may be habituating. The
individual may become psychologically rather than physically dependent on
the drug.
Legalization Of Marijuana
Those who urge the legalization of marijuana maintain the drug is
entirely safe. The available data suggested, this is not so, Marijuana
occasionally produces acute panic reactions or even transient psychoses.
Furthermore, a person driving under the influence of marijuana is a danger
to themselves and others. If smoked heavily and a great deal of
consistency, its use has been clearly associated with mental breakdown. In
many persons who smoke chronically, the drug reinforces passivity and
reduces goal-directed, constructive activity. The chronic use of pure
resin (hashish) has been associated both with mental deterioration and
criminality. One of the major complications of marijuana use is the
tendency on the part of some users to progress to more dangerous drugs.
Users in economically deprived areas usually go on to heroin, whereas more
affluent individuals tend to move from marijuana to more potent
hallucinogens such as LSD. There is no established medical use for
marijuana or any other cannabis preparation. In the United States, its use
is a crime and the laws governing marijuana are similar to those
regulating heroin. Many authorities now urge that the laws be modified to
mitigate the penalties relating to conviction on marijuana possession
charges.
The Case For Legalizing Marijuana Use
The United States stands apart from many nations in its deep
respect for the individual. The strong belief in personal freedom appears
early in the nation's history. The Declaration of Independence speaks of
every citizen's right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
The Constitution and Bill of Rights go further, making specific guarantees.
They forbid the government to make unwarranted entry into dwelling places.
They forbid seizure of personal property, except when very clear reasons
are approved by the courts. They allow every citizen to remain silent in
court when accused of a crime. Legal decisions have extended these rights,
so that every citizen may feel safe, secure, and sheltered from public
view in the privacy of his or her home.
The Right To Privacy
In recent years, Americans have referred to privacy as one of the
basic human rights, something to be claimed by anyone, anywhere. United
States citizens feel strongly about this and often tell other countries
that they must honor their people's claims to privacy and personal freedom.
Foreign leaders often disagree. They resent what they deem arrogant
meddling by the United States. Leaders of the Soviet Union, for example,
regard individual privacy as trivial when compared to the needs of the
state. If the United States is to be persuasive in promoting freedom in
other parts of the world, it must respect the privacy of its own citizens.
Sometimes it is hard to do this because what goes on in people's private
lives may seem offensive. But, according to U.S. traditions, there is a
strong case to be made against legislating the private behavior of adults,
so long as that behavior does not in turn violate the rights of others.
Some people feel that this reasoning should hold also for marijuana. A
person who smokes at home is not doing injury. The marijuana user is
indulging in a minor pleasure over which that government should have no
jurisdiction. It is quite clear from survey data that most people do not
become physically dependent on marijuana. The majority use it as others
use alcohol - to relax occasionally and to indulge a festive mood. How can
a mild intoxicant, taken less than once a day by most users, be seen as a
public threat? Even those who are "hooked", or psychologically dependent
upon their habit, should not be penalized by the law. Some people find any
compulsive and unproductive behavior disgusting. But that is not a reason
for outlawing it. Consider eating, many people develop compulsive habits
about food. They talk about it frequently. They spend many of their waking
hours anticipating, planning, obtaining, and consuming food. This may be
unattractive. It certainly is not productive and it can be harmful if the
"food addict" is over weight. But there are no laws to prevent food
addiction. If Congress tried to forbid the eating of ice cream sundaes or
cotton candy, many people would be outraged, others would simply laugh.
The same sort of argument is raised by some people with respect to
marijuana. Even compulsive marijuana smoking by an adult is not so
offensive that it injured neighbors or requires government intervention.
The attempt to use the law to tell people what they may and may not
consume at home is an arrogant invasion of personal privacy. Protecting
the Drug User's Physical Health Sometimes it is said that the law must
protect the drug user from himself. The argument takes two forms. One has
to do with the damage a drug may do to a person's health and the other
with the individual's power of self-control or freedom. First consider the
health effects. By any reasonable standard, marijuana is a mild drug and as
for overdosing, there is no scientifically valid evidence of anyone dying
of an overdose of marijuana smoke. Of course, it is possible to commit
suicide by consuming large amounts of marijuana. But it is possible to die
by eating too much salt. Salt is not illegal. Aspirin kills by overdose
and that's legal. Many people die by drinking too much alcohol, an
addictive drug. It too is legal. Why is marijuana considered more
dangerous?
Protecting Society from Marijuana
One argument made against the legalization of marijuana is that
it damages not only the user but innocent bystanders. This argument, like
the one about protecting the user, has two parts. The first deals with
physical injury and the second with spiritual health. The main physical
threat to society is that users under the influence of a drug with crash a
car or airplane, or lose control in some way and do harm. People who have
recently smoked marijuana do show signs of clumsiness and disorientation.
They should not operate machinery in this condition. One study estimates
that alcohol plays a part in 55% of all fatal highway crashes. Marijuana
may present similar risks, but at present there are no reliable data on
its importance in accidents. According to John Stuart Mill's writings, the
government should try to control only the aspects of drug use that injure
society. In this vein, it makes sense to have laws against driving under
the influence of marijuana similar to those governing driving under the
influence of alcohol. In other words, driving while on marijuana should be
outlawed by not the use of marijuana itself. Some people believe that
marijuana threatens society in a more insidious way. They argue that it
drains workers' energy and makes them less productive. This in turn lowers
the vitality of the economy, depressing the overall quality of life. In
addition, drug use- including marijuana smoking- is seen as a plague on
society that must be isolated. This disease theory holds that legalizing
marijuana would make it more widely available and that this would tend to
increase its use as well as the use of all kinds of drugs. One of the
detriments of tolerating drug use, according to this theory, is that is
encourages the use of more and different drugs. The National Institute on
Drug Abuses 1984 report to Congress cited no evidence to support the idea
that drug use is hurting economic productivity. It said: "The fact is,
very little is known about the complex relationship which undoubtedly
exists between drug abuse, worker performance, and productivity, or the
lack thereof.... Simply put, the number of unanswered questions currently
far outnumbers the available answers." Nor is there any strong evidence
that legalizing marijuana would increase use of the drug. In fact, there is
some evidence suggesting that drug use under a relaxed legal system might
not increase at all. Many states have removed the penalties for marijuana
possession that were on the books in the 1950s and 1960s. The change
occurred during a reform movement that swept the nation in the mid 1970s.
Yet in spite of the less stringent laws, studies show that the use of
marijuana in the affected states has, after an initial increase, declined.
Although marijuana became easier to use (from a legal standpoint), it also
became less popular.
The Failure of Prohibition
Examining the U.S. policy on marijuana on the basis of performance,
one must judge it a miserable failure. The number of people who have
smoked the drug at least once has grown from an uncounted few in the 1950s,
when some of the strictest antimarijuana laws were imposed, to nearly 50
million today. During this period the federal government has made steadily
increasing efforts to stop its production and importation, and seizures of
marijuana in the ports has grown steadily. Elaborate and costly
international police campaigns have been launched, and the number of drug
arrests in the United States has increased. The federal budget for drug
enforcement reflected in several agencies has gone above $1 billion a year.
And yet the illegal trade in marijuana continues. Supplies are so
plentiful that the price has actually come down. The response has been to
redouble police efforts and hope that things will change. The result is
that more money is spent on a failed policy, creating an ever-growing army
of drug enforcers dedicated to keeping the policy alive. The illegal
market for marijuana grows even faster than the police force, however,
because the drug users are willing to pay more to get what they want than
taxpayers are willing to pay to stop it. The drug police enjoy their work
and are not going to quit. And why should they as long as their salaries
are paid? The admission that the marijuana laws have failed will have to
come from someone else- not from the police. Marijuana is a common weed,
easier to produce than the bathtub gin of the Prohibition years. It is not
surprising that thousands of "dealers" have been drawn into the marijuana
business. Despite the great risks they face, including bullying by other
dealers and the threat of arrest, they are attracted by the profits. The
law cannot change the economics of this market because it operates outside
the law. All the police can do is to make it risky to get into the
marijuana business. This is supposed to drive out the less courageous
dealers, reduce the amount of marijuana available, and inflate prices. But
even by this measure, the police effort has failed. As mentioned earlier,
the price of marijuana is declining. There are several ways in which the
policy on marijuana imposed a burden on society. The obvious one is the
cost of supporting the federal enforcement effort. Aside from this, there
is a hard-to-measure but significant impact on society because the law
creates a huge criminal class. It includes not just dealers who are out
for profit but a much larger group of users. Consider three major
penalties for having such a large criminal class.
Some Benefits of Legalizing Marijuana
By lifting the ban on marijuana use and treating it like other
drugs such as tobacco and alcohol, the nation would gain immediate and
long-term benefits. This change in the law would greatly improve the
quality of life for many people. Victims of glaucoma and those needing
antinausea treatment, for example, would find marijuana easily available.
If the medical advantages that are claimed for marijuana are real, many
more patients would benefit. Research, which has been slowed in the past
by the government's reluctance to frant exemptions to the marijuana laws,
would be easier to conduct. The cloud of suspicion would disappear, and
doctors could get on with investigating marijuana's medical uses with out
fear of controversy. It might become possible to discuss the dangers of
marijuana use without getting caught up in a policy debate. Meanwhile, the
black market would disappear overnight. Some arrangement would be made to
license the production of marijuana cigarettes. Thousands of dealers would
be put out of business, and a secret part of the economy would come into
the open. It is difficult to say whether this change would reduce crime
because criminals would probably continue to sell other drugs. But it
would have an impact on the amount of money flowing through criminal
channels, and this might weaken organized crime. Lastly, the federal
budget would benefit in two ways, Federal revenues would increase, because
marijuana cigarettes would be taxed at the point of sale. The companies
that make the cigarettes would also pay income taxes, adding to the
federal coffers. Second, there would be a reduction in the amount spent on
law enforcement efforts to apprehend and prosecute users and sellers of
marijuana. The drug enforcement authorities might reduce their budget
requests, or, more likely, focus more intensely on hard drugs and violent
crimes. The courts would be relieved of hearing some drug cases, as well.
The most important gain would be in the quality of government. The sorts
of temptations and opportunities that lead to corruption would be
significantly minimized. The illogical pattern of law enforcement, which
now treats marijuana as more dangerous than alcohol, would end. It would
set more achievable goals for law enforcement, and this would lend
strength and credibility to the government.
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Alcohol vs. Marijuana 1: Over 100 thousand deaths annually are
directly linked to acute alcohol poisoning. 2: In 4,000 years of
recorded history, no one has ever died from a pot overdose. 3: Alcohol
causes Server physical and psychology dependence. 4:
Alcohol is reported to cause temporary and permanent damage to all
major organs of the body. 5: Cannabis is a much less
violent provoking substance then alcohol. * With over 60 million
people using cannabis in the U.S. Today our laws and law
makers should view it under the same light. As they do alcohol.
Marijuana Status 1970: 11% of high school seniors said they were using
marijuana every day. 1975: About 27% said they had
used marijuana sometime in the previous month. 1978: The monthly users
grew up to 37% then in 1986 dropped to 23%.
1979: 12 to 17 year olds reported using it within the last month has
dropped from a high point of 17% and in 1987 dropped to
12%.
Bibliography
1. Adams, Leon; "Marijuana". Encyclopedia International. Vol 11. p365-347.
LEXICON PUBLICATIONS. Philippines, 1979
2. Lorimer, Lawrence; "Marijuana" Encyclopedia Year Book 1993. p214-215.
GROLIER INCORPORATED. Canada, 1993
3. Snyder, Solomon. The Encyclopedia of Psychoactive Drugs. Series 2.
LEGALIZATION: A DEBATE. CHELSEA HOUSE PUBLISHERS. New York, 1988
ADDITIONAL FEATURED ESSAYS
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