For the past 30 years there has been an issue throughout the United States on whether marijuana should be legalized. Supporters believe marijuana legalization would decrease drug-related crime while also posing a new drug for medicinal purposes. The opposition believes legalization would only increase crime as well as the number of hard-core drug addicts that result from initially using marijuana. Keeping marijuana illegal is a problem because millions of people are arrested every year for selling or possessing marijuana and it is causing prisons to be overcrowded and drug related crime is increasing ("Prohibition In Their Prime"). Illegal marijuana is affecting people throughout the country as well as users of marijuana for recreational and medicinal purposes, because tax money is being used to enforce this issue. Tax money is specifically being spent for law enforcement, court systems, and prison expansions (Thronton 1). This problem needs to be solved immediately to allow prison overcrowding to cease and to halt the drug-related crime that is produced in effect to marijuana being illegal.
             My solution to the problem is to legalize marijuana and create government owned and operated stores selling marijuana. I propose that legalization would reduce the amount of inmates in prisons, decrease the amount of drug-related crime associated with marijuana, and save tax money. Considering a majority of prisoners are in jail in some way because of marijuana, if it was legalized these people would be released from prison instead of violent criminals who are often given early release due to overcrowded prisons ("Pro and Con"). The United States citizens have some power in legalization and then again they don't. In Colorado recently, voters voted yes on a proposal to allow marijuana for medicinal use, yet the Colorado state legislature has not enacted the proposal ("Marijuana Measure An Apparent Winner"). The people who possess the...