Legalization of Marijuana

The use of marijuana as a recreational drug is becoming more widespread on college campuses. College students are especially outspoken about marijuana use and its legalization. They feel that they are so stressed with classes that they need a way to calm their nerves before a big test. With the demands of school and heavy workloads students are pushed into a “world of coping” which tends to regard alcohol or drug use as a way to get by. Students are thinking a lot more about the subject and they can’t find any reason not to use marijuana besides the fact that it’s illegal. So why not more of a fight for its legalization on college campuses? With marijuana nobody needs to fight for it because it’s readily available and so easy to access.(Star Tribune, 1996; Chanen, David) One of the main reasons for the legalization of marijuana, is the medical effects it can have on certain diseases and treatments.

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It was not easy to get a prescription for marijuana in the states, even when the law was passed that you could get it for medical purposes. The federal government had been punishing doctors for recommending pot to their patients. Even though it was legal to prescribe marijuana for medicinal purposes in their state, the Clinton administration sought to punish doctors who recommended marijuana. They said that doctors would lose their licenses to prescribe medicine, could be excluded from medical insurance programs and could face criminal charges if they prescribed marijuana to their patients. This whole conflict began after the Institute of Medicine ruled that marijuana can be effective as medicine (The Christian Science Monitor, 1999, Slambrouck, Paul Van).

California was the first state in the nation to pass a medical marijuana law in 1996. It is not the only one though; in fact there are seven other states that have approved the medicinal use of marijuana. The Bush administration would still pursue the act of reprimanding doctors for helping patients obtain pot (AP Worldstream, 2003, david kravets). The usual diseases that desire a marijuana prescription are cancer, AIDS, and glaucoma. Patients that have used marijuana say it relieves pain, stimulates appetite and wards off nausea. In one case this ladies chemotherapy had caused her to vomit. The original drug she was prescribed did not stop the vomiting. She then tried marijuana, she smoked it, not a lot of it obviously, but It helped her tremendously. It ended the nausea and helped her eat and actually keep her food down. She then said “it is ridiculous to outlaw a substance that will work when nothing else seems to” (Morning Edition NPR, 2001, Renee Montagne) Another reason it should be legalized, is that it is costing our taxpayers too much money to keep it illegal.

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Franklin Delano Roosevelt passed The Marijuana tax act of 1937 that federally prohibited pot. Since it has been prohibited, the use of marijuana has been on a steady incline. According to the FBI, 402,000 American’s were arrested nationwide for marijuana offenses in 1980. By 1999, a record 704,000 were caught, 88 percent of them for possession rather than trafficking. Since cannabis arrests constitute 44 percent of all drug apprehensions, the Marijuana Policy Project (MPP) estimates that the governments war on pot smokers costs taxpayers $9.2 billion annually.Using U.S. bureau of Justice statistics data, MPP calculates that 37,500 federal, state and local inmates were imprisoned for marijuana violations in 1998, half of them for simple possession. At an average cost of $20,000 each, our government spent $750 million to imprison these offenders. So why don’t we try and save money by letting simple possession charges slide, and imprison the real criminals that need to be locked up. The costs of peddling small-time marijuana users through the criminal courts far outweigh any apparent gains, especially when penalties have not deterred the always increasing use of marijuana on the streets.

The national Drug Control Budget has enlarged from 1.5 billion in 1982 to $19 billion in 2002. Our taxpayers money is also spent on other drug-related acts. The IRS received $73.5 million last year to pay employees to process, Foreign Bank Account Reports, Casino Currency Transaction Reports and Suspicious Activity Reports, this activity is scored as 100 percent drug-related. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife service spent $1 million to uproot marijuana plants and eliminate drug use among hunters. Taxpayers are also forced to fund the militarization of domestic law enforcement. Because a lot of police officers are on drug lords pay rolls. Active duty armed forces have mined 46 percent of America’s