Should Marijuana Be Legalized In The United States

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Should Marijuana be legalized in the United States? Cheryl D. Usry POL 1016: Current Event Dr. Harold V. Jones II March 22, 2012 One of the biggest issues argued about all over congress, the media, and in public resides in our country’s War on Drugs. One of the primary focuses of the War on Drugs targets the controversial drug marijuana. Marijuana remains one the most widely used illegal drugs. This completely natural plant which previously helped so many people has puzzled the leaders of our nation for a long time even before the whole concept of “Reaganomics,” which focused on drugs and its entirety. In order to understand why marijuana should be legal or illegal we must first understand what exactly marijuana…show more content…
Drugs such as opiates and crack cocaine should not be legal due to the massive effects they have on individuals. According to Charles B. Rangel “Drug legalization threatens to undermine our society. The argument about the economic costs associated with the drug war is a selfish argument that coincides with the short-sighted planning that we have been using with other social policies. With any legalization of drugs, related problems would not go away; they would only intensify. If we legalize, we will be paying much more than the $30 billion per year we now spend on direct health care costs associated with illegal drug use.” (Charles B. Rangel; Criminal Justice Ethics, Vol. 17, 1998) I agree with him because legalizing drugs such as crack cocaine does a lot of damage to the body and people tend to go overboard in using the drug. For people who shoot up with needles there will be a lot more health risks and a vast spread of diseases. It is already hard to afford medical help this will not help the…show more content…
If people took action and the government legalized it today, I’m sure we would see progress. People suffering from manic depression to Multiple Sclerosis would be able to experience relief. The government could make billions of dollars off of the taxes it could impose on its sale, and its implementation into the industrial world would create thousands of new jobs for the economy. Also, because of its role making in paper making, the rain forests of South Africa can be saved from their current fate of extinction. No recorded deaths have been recorded as a result of marijuana use, it is not physically addictive like alcohol or tobacco, and doctors will agree it is safer to use than most substances. These are just a few to remind you that maybe legalizing marijuana really isn’t that bad. It is important to realize that the vast majority of deaths on the drug war simply would not happen without prohibition. When drug dealers fight it out over territory and they or their neighbors are killed in the process, it is a symptom of prohibition, much as when we suffered the scourge of alcohol prohibition many years ago. Prohibition makes violence
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