Knowing that his first hour teacher didn't care if he was tardy, Jason casually walked off campus against the flow of everyone hurrying to their classes. As he walked to the alley where he went every day, he had already begun breaking up the big pieces of dried cannabis in his hand. When his friends ask if his teacher cares, he replies that he's sure his entire first period knows he walks in stoned, but they don't care. Jason is just one of the 27% of high school seniors who have used marijuana in the last month. Marijuana, whose use predates modern civilization, has become the most controversial drug of our time and may have greater adverse effects on the mind than once believed. "The first solid evidence of hemp use...comes from the Yang-shao culture of China (about 4500 BC)..." (Hermes and Galperin, 29). Granted it was used primarily for rope and making nets, "THC (as well as nicotine and cocaine) was recently identified in an Egyptian mummy from approximately 950 BC." (Kuhn et al., 125). Virginia and Massachusetts were the first places to grow the plant in North America in the early 1600's. But what began as one of the most essential crops for the colonies became the target of public concern near the start of the 20th century. Newspapers and magazines began printing articles on the "marijuana menace" and "the assassin of youth". "In 1936, a film called Reefer Madness was produced as attempt to scare young people away from trying the drug." (Hyde, 62). The Marijuana Tax Act of 1937 required all "manufacturers, importers, wholesale dealers, pharmacists, and medical practitioners handling the substance to pay a variety of occupational and transactional taxes for with marijuana." (Hermes and Galperin, 35). Marijuana users became known as criminals by definition, because laws against the possession of the drug were created. Thus bega...