Legalization of Marijuana for Personal Use
I intend to discuss the issue of whether marijuana should be legalized ornot. My audience will be college students. Because all issues related tomarijuana are emotional as well as logical, I have to assume thatindividuals within my audience, a college class, will hold a wide varietyof opinions. I expect that some will be opposed to the idea on variousmoral or practical grounds, that others will be in agreement based onlogical or practical grounds, and that some will be in favor of it forpersonal reasons, most likely because they like to use it and would like tobe able to do so without fear of being arrested, having a serious blackmarket on their record, or of having to deal with illegal drug dealers in My own view will be that marijuana for personal use should belegalized but regulated in much the way we do alcoholic beverages. I canmake several arguments for this view. One that at first seems verypersuasive is that people are discovering legitimate medical uses formarijuana. AIDS patients report that when they use marijuana their appetitereturns, supporting their general health. This can be lifesaving with adisease like AIDS. It has also been shown to help with the nausea tha
If we legalize marijuana we can regulate it. For instance, bothproducts come with warnings about dangers to unborn children. Some of these parents oppose even the medicinal use of marijuana,claiming that it sends a message that marijuana is OK because it's"medicine" (Cella, PAGE). We couldrequire uniform, measured standards. Those are all very serious illnesses and all can have devastatingconsequences, but because marijuana is classified federally as a drug withabuse potential only by the federal government, it can be very hard forthese people to get the marijuana that they say helps them so much. In atime when our prisons are already overcrowded to the point that we have toprematurely parole dangerous criminals with a history of violence makes nosense. This is very similar to our disastrousexperiment prohibiting alcohol early in the 20th century. It is notreasonable to tell these people to just not worry: the well being of theirchildren is at stake. Simply hiding marijuanabehind laws won't make these children safer. Very often it is alcoholthat should be identified as the "gateway" drug (Cella, PAGE). Parents who worry about what marijuana might lead to should look toHolland's experience (Endt, PAGE): with the legalization of marijuana,their problems with harder drugs have decreased, not increased. In both cases,prohibition of the substance has not eliminated its use but has lined thepockets of criminal elements. Society will bebetter served by such a response. Parents of youth who have ended up with severe substance abuse problemsclaim that marijuana was their child's first illegal drug (Van Slambrouck,PAGE). We have seen much the same thing in our"War on Drugs.
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