Should Marijuana Be Legalized?
In this year of the millenium, the American populace, even while in the midst of the most prolonged economic boom in the history of the Republic, is confronted with some serious problems. Any randomly chosen group of people asked to list the most dangerous of these, would include among their immediate answers: "The Drug Problem".By the "Drug Problem", do they mean the proliferation in our communities of all illicit, mood-altering, physically dangerous drugs? Or do they really mean the accompanying problems bought on by these proscribed substances: crime and the threat of crime, violence, disease, the growing number of users on public welfare, the loss of productivity to the country's industry, the congestion of the court system, the over-crowding of our penal institutions, the diversion of our tax dollars from more productive areas, the corruption of our law enforcement agencies, and directly and indirectly the erosion of our civil rights?Since I am confining this paper to discussing the laws prohibiting marijuana use, I will concede that it fits the first two categories above; i.e. it is by law, illicit, and by its nature, mood-altering. With the third category we enter upon shaky ground. There is no scientific proof
In 1993, among Americans age 12 and over, about 34% had used marijuana sometime in their life, but only 9% had used it in the past year, 4. Many regular users - including many daily users - consume marijuana in a way that does not interfere with other life activities, and may in some cases enhance them. The FactEssentially all drugs are used in "an addictive fashion" by some people. Today research shows its effectiveness in treating ulcers (Bateman, D. And if war is the best answer to the problem, than our resources must of necessity be allocated in the most efficient manner. Donziger, a young attorney who headed the National Criminal Justice Commission in 1996, explains the paradoxical thinking thusly: "If crime is going up, then we need to build more prisons; and if crime is going down, it's because we built more prisons -- and building even more prisons will therefore drive crime down even lower. There can be no doubt that Washington separated the males from the females. Mount Vernon, New York: Consumers Union, 1972Applying the lessons of history to the marijuana laws, we can observe that any attempt to repeal marijuana prohibition must be approached carefully.
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Acceptance Essays
