Do your Research
We live in a country where legal and illegal substances are quite polarizing. Why is alcohol legal and weed illegal? It makes no sense at all does it? According to the CDC ingesting large amounts of Marijuana cannot kill you. However a legal substance such as alcohol accounts for over 80,000 deaths a year. Plus it accounts for 2.5 million years of life lost. Even though marijuana is not lethal it can still have negative effects. The main chemical in marijuana is THC, which can affect one’s mood, impair their movements and it can cause hallucinations. Marijuana can also cause brain damage which is either permanent or temporary research has yet to prove either. When asking people what they would choose when shown the medical evidence of the two people opted to go the route of marijuana. Most people considered alcohol to be at a higher danger level, while marijuana was at a lower danger level. Also about 25% of people surveyed thought alcohol was substantially more dangerous. While weed has been proven that it is not lethal, it does have some similar qualities with other substances. While its growing popularity is increasing with its legality, there are issues with it. People are becoming more dependent on it for both recreational and medicinal use and it’s being associated with mental disorders. Marijuana use disorders are associated with dependence and withdrawals. These withdrawals make people irritated, restless and uncomfortable after discontinuing use. A majority of those surveyed thought that alcohol was much more addictive than marijuana (American Addiction Centers, 2019).
The things that are legal like alcohol and pain killers are so interesting. Pain killers have started a crisis in our country, the opioid crisis. Many people I have talked with have told me that they would prefer to smoke weed over taking tons of pills that get them hooked and kill them. Because of a federal prohibition on marijuana it has caused many disasters. For many years millions of Americans have been arrested because of possession of marijuana. It is astounding. In 2017 more Americans were put in jail for possession of marijuana that those for murder, rape, and aggravated assault combined. That’s one marijuana arrest every minute. Because of this ban about nearly $14 billion dollars a year on arrests, court costs, and incarceration. Because of this ban it hurts the economy in terms of wages lost by those incarcerated. Plus with it very difficult for those who went jail it’s harder to get a job. By legalizing marijuana you can put a tax on it just like cigarettes and alcohol. With a tax like that local and state governments could raise more than $6 billion dollars a year (Reich, 2019). In New York a group has been working on the MRTA (Marijuana Regulation and Taxation Act). The MRTA would make the age of use 21. They would also include a licensing system which would benefit small and local businesses and farms. They would use the tax money for social and local things like job training, youth programs, and drug treatment programs (DPA, 2020). While this country still has ways to go on legalizing marijuana maybe we could learn lessons from other countries around the world. Until then we need to be more understanding and accepting of the changing world we are living in.
Sources
American Addiction Centers. (2019). Retrieved November 25, 2020, from https://americanaddictioncenters.org/learn/perceptions-of-alcohol-vs-marijuana/
D. (2020). Marijuana Legalization and Regulation. Retrieved November 25, 2020, from https://drugpolicy.org/issues/marijuana-legalization-and-regulation
Reich, R. (2019, May 28). Why We Must Legalize Marijuana. Retrieved November 25, 2020, from https://prospect.org/health/must-legalize-marijuana/
