The legalization of marijuana would greatly reduce the amount of non violent criminals in prisons and jails. Which would then help to reduce the overcrowding of them which seems to be such a large problem in today’s society? For example if marijuana were to be completely legalized and all of the people currently in jail or prison for said offense were to be released this would cut the prison population by 14.7% and save taxpayers about $1.2 billion a year. People’s opions of marijuana are changing. A recent study shows that attitudes towards marijuana have changed. The amount of people that support its legalization has almost tripled in the past two decades and if you add in the people who think it should be legalized for prescription drug treatment the number almost doubles again. The majority of the people that support its legalization are young, well educated, professionals. For decades one of the main reasons law makers say that they need to keep marijuana illegal is because it is a gateway drug which means its use usually leads to the use of other drugs. A new study however suggests that this is not necessarily true. The study shows that teens that are likely to experiment with

The reason that marijuana is normally the first drug used is because it is the first drug that kids are exposed to also if it were legalized people wouldn"tmt have to go through drug dealers which would then greatly reduce there exposure to other more dangerous substances. Also if you are caught selling it then the penalties are really stiff. The reason for this is because tobacco companies add many chemicals to there products to make people smoke even more than the nicotine does. The marijuana laws in the United States today extremely ridiculous. Marijuana is not even close to as harmful as other drugs yet people who get busted for marijuana are sometimes treated just as harshly as someone who got busted for heroin which is much more dangerous also look at the all of the people in prison and jail for drug related offenses and the look at how many of them are in there for marijuana charges and chances are you will probably see that most of them are in there for just that. Marijuana is also smoked far less often than tobacco, most heavy pot smokers only smoke 2 or maybe 3 joints a day while most cigarette smokers smoke 20 or more cigarettes a day. It can be used to reduce nausea and vomiting in cancer and aids patients and also increase there appetite it can also be used to relive pain for people with chronic pain and reduce eye pressure in glaucoma patients. Many researchers now believe that marijuana smoke maybe less harmful than tobacco smoke the reason for this is because even though cigarettes are normally filtered and marijuana is not, tobacco smoke gives off more toxins than marijuana smoke. Alcohol is perfectly legal for people 21 and older to consume whenever wherever they want as long as they don"tmt drive a motor vehicle yet alcohol is shown to be more harmful to the human body than marijuana. The reason that the laws are so ridiculous is because they can ruin someone"tms life just for smoking a little pot. Marijuana on the other hand is illegal for everyone it does not matter how old you are. The reason for this is because there are many more chemicals in tobacco both naturally and unnaturally occurring, then in marijuana. In a recent survey on Medscape a website directed towards health care officials 76 of physicians and 89 of nurses said they thought that medical marijuana should be available to patients in certain cases. Hopefully after reading this paper you have learned at least one thing you didn"tmt know about marijuana and its effects and hopefully you see that it really is not as bad as many people make it out be.