Marijuana
Currently, illicit drugs remain high on the list of concerns of Americans and are considered one of the major problems facing our country today. We see stories on the news about people being killed on the street every day over drugs. To many people drugs are only an inner-city problem, but in reality they affect all of us - users and non-users. I believe that the negative affects we associate with drugs would be greatly reduced if the United States adopted a policy of the total decriminalization of marijuana. The current drug policy of our government is failing. Drug laws have created corruption, violence, and an increase in street crime, and disrespect for the criminal justice system. Current drug legislation has failed to reduce demand. It's just too hard to monitor illegal substances when a significant portion of the population is committed to using drugs (Inciardi and McBride 260). Marijuana comes from the hemp plan. It can readily be grown in fields across the nation and was cultivated heavily in colonial period. After 130 years of being legal, the potential problems of marijuana were brought into the public eye by Harry J. Anslingler, the commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics and author of Marijuana: Assassi
Studies of actual human populations have failed to demonstrate that marijuana adversely affects the reproductive system (Hagar 1). "How Sweet is Mary Jane?" National Review 25 June 1996: 44. Later that same year the AMA came out in favor of the decriminalizing of marijuana (Hager 1). The push for legalization of Cannibis is making news across America just as it did in the 60's. 4 billion in 1988, $28 billion greater than corn at 31. The following is an excerpt from their policy on drugs which was adopted in 1994: Criminalizing the use, possession, manufacture, and distribution of drugs violates the principle that the criminal law may not be used to protect individuals from the consequences of their own autonomous choices or to impose upon those individuals a majoritarian conception of morality and responsibility. Actual studies of human populations of marijuana users have shown no evidence of damage to the brain (Hager 1). One joint contains three times more tar than do cigarettes and is considered four times more dangerous (Courtwright 54). At this point marijuana was removed from the public eye, and heavy users included poor Negroes, migrant Mexicans, and Jazz Musicians (Himmelstein 3). The Strange Career of Marijuana [sic]. Instead of eliminating drugs, the prohibition of them just fosters an illegal industry able to inflate prices. Nahas's generalizations from the petri dishes to human beings have been rejected by the scientific community as being invalid.
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