Should marijuana be legal?
Marijuana is the product of Cannabis sativa, a hemp plant, and it refers specifically to the plant’s leaves and flowers. Used for centuries as a painkiller, it is popular today as a recreational drug that produces a general feeling of well-being.
Marijuana is known by a variety of alternative names, including pot, weed, and grass. It is illegal in most countries, although some nations have lowered the penalties for owning or using small amounts of the drug. Movements have formed to legalize marijuana, at least for medical purposes, but critics of such efforts argue that the drug does more harm than good.
most people who use this drug usually crush it up and smoke it out of a pipe and/or a rolled cigarette. It had a wide variety of side effects and issues relating to it.
Users may experience both physical and psychological effects. Physical effects range from red eyes and dry mouth to an increased heart rate and loss of coordination. Some effects—including relief from pain and nausea, increased appetite, and reduced muscle spasms—are considered beneficial for medical conditions such as cancer, AIDS, and multiple sclerosis.
As of early 2010, fourteen states had passed laws allowing seriously ill patients to take marijuana for pain control if it was prescribed by a doctor. Home cultivation by patients is also allowed in these states except New Jersey.
Hemp-is the name of the soft, durable fibre that is cultivated from plants of the Cannibis Genus.
cultivated for commercial use. In modern times, hemp has been used for industrial purposes including paper,textiles,fabric and construction. Also as fuel and medical purposes.
Hemp is drought resistant, making it an ideal crop in the dry western regions of the country. Hemp is the only biomass resource capable of making America energy independent. And our government outlawed it in 1938.
Remember, in 10 years, by the year 2000, America will have exhausted 80% of her petroleum reserves. Will we then go to war with the Arabs for the privilege of driving our cars; will we stripmine our land for coal, and poison our air so we can drive our autos an extra 100 years; will we raze our forests for our energy needs?
During World War II, our supply of hemp was cut off by the Japanese. The federal government responded to the emergency by suspending marijuana prohibition. Patriotic American farmers were encouraged to apply for a license to cultivate hemp and responded enthusiastically. Hundreds of thousands of acres of hemp were grown.
For a crop, hemp is very environmentally friendly (with the exception of chemical fertilizers used in industrial agriculture) as it requires few pesticides and no herbicides
In November 2010, California voters will consider a ballot initiative that would legalize marijuana in the state. The proposed law includes restrictions on sale and use, such as a minimum purchase age of 21, but the bill gives marijuana roughly the same legal status as alcohol. Early polls suggest the measure will pass, although full-scale debate has not yet occurred.
Marijuana legalization is a far bigger step than decriminalization or medicalization, which have already occurred in California and other states. Decriminalization legalizes possession of small amounts of marijuana, but it does not eliminate the underground market or permit easy taxation. Medicalization is closer to legalization, but it still leaves producers and consumers in a legal gray area and collects less revenue than legalization.
Should California, or the country, legalize marijuana? Yes, for a multitude of reasons.
Legalization will move the marijuana industry above ground, just as the repeal of alcohol prohibition restored the legal alcohol industry. A small component of the marijuana market might remain illicit—moonshine marijuana rather than moonshine whiskey—but if regulation and taxation are moderate, most producers and consumers will choose the legal sector, as they did with alcohol.
Legalization would therefore eliminate most of the violence and corruption that currently characterize marijuana markets. These occur because, in underground markets, participants cannot resolve disputes via non-violent mechanisms such as lawsuits, advertising, lobbying, or campaign contributions. Instead, producers and consumers in these markets use violence to resolve disputes with each other and bribery or violence to resolve disputes with law enforcement. These features of “vice” markets disappear when vice is legal, as abundant experience with alcohol, prostitution, and gambling all demonstrate.
Legalization would result in numerous other benefits. Medical marijuana patients would no longer suffer legal limbo or social stigma from using marijuana to treat nausea from chemotherapy, glaucoma, or other conditions. Infringements on civil liberties and racial profiling would decline, since victimless crimes are a key cause of such police behavior. Quality control would improve because sellers could advertise and establish reputations for a consistent product, allowing consumers to choose low or high-potency marijuana.
Legalization would also generate budgetary savings for state and federal governments, both by eliminating expenditures on enforcement and by allowing taxation of legalized sales. I recently estimated that the net impact would be a deficit reduction of about $20 billion per year, summed over all levels of government.
The U.S. experiment with marijuana prohibition is just as misguided as was its earlier experiment with alcohol prohibition. We learned our lesson once; it is time to learn it again.
