On Saturday, April 6 2013, thousands of people rallied for marijuana legalization at the annual Hash Bash event at University of Michigan Diag. A survey conducted by the Pew Research Center found that the majority of Americans support the legalization of marijuana (52%). With this increased acceptance toward marijuana, the political economy has followed suit with a blatant push for the legalization of this drug.
Marijuana is the most widely used drug in all of the United States. According to a survey published in 2009 by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), there were 16.7 million Americans (or 6.6%) who used Marijuana in the past month. With this being said, despite the fact that it is illegal, efforts towards keeping this drug off the streets have gone in vain. According to a recent FBI report, law enforcement officials in America make a marijuana-related arrest every 42 seconds. It is estimated that the United States government spends $10 billion dollars a year on the war against Marijuana. This is in contrast to California, who has revenue of 14 billion annually for the production of its legalized medicinal Marijuana. The US Government is losing a costly battle against Marijuana, when instead it can simply legalize the drug, saving taxpayers money and preventing otherwise inoffensive individuals from spending unnecessary time in jail for a virtually harmless past time.
Marijuana is far less detrimental to one’s health than Tobacco and Alcohol, which are both legal. Everyday 1,000 people die from smoking related illnesses and 550 die from alcohol related accidents and diseases. Yet, both drugs are legal and easily accessible. Recreational usage of marijuana does not produce these types of occurrences. There is no record of a person being diagnosed with Lung Cancer due to chronic weed smoking or dying due to overdosing on marijuana. Furthermore, cannabis does have actual health benefits as opposed to tobacco and alcohol which have none. Marijuana has been noted to treat migraines, slow down tumor growth, relieve the symptoms of chronic diseases, treat Glaucoma, calm symptoms of Tourette’s and OCD, and even prevent Alzheimer’s.
Legalizing marijuana will also lead to a decrease in crime and violence. “During the prohibition of alcohol during the 1920’s the Mafia could produce alcohol and had a considerable control over others who wanted it. The role that the Mafia played in the 1920’s has transformed into the corner drug dealers and drug cartel of the 1990’s” (www.marijuanatoday.com). When you make a commodity illegal it almost instantaneously creates a black market for the item, with inflated prices, organized crime, and hence violence. But if legal, marijuana would be widely accessible, therefore eliminating the crime and violence that would follow.
Despite this, the Obama Administration remains firm on its opposition to any form of drug legalization. This is not a debate of morality or social obligation, but of practicality and realism. The cold hard truth is millions of people are already smoking weed every day, the government is wasting money trying to fight a battle that they have already lost, marijuana is less detrimental to one’s health and has substantially fewer deaths associated with it than already legal drugs such as tobacco and alcohol, and as we observed during prohibition when you legalize a drug you eradicate the crime and violence from its presence. Those are the facts. Who cares if people feel that smoking pot is wrong? The truth is the government shouldn’t concern itself with morality but what is most practical. Marijuana is here. It is prevalent in our society and there is nothing that can be done to reverse that. So instead of wasting further money, resources, and efforts, Congress might as well “pass the spliff” and make the recreational use and distribution of marijuana legal.
