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Should Marijuana Be Legal?

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With the legalization of marijuana having just come around on a state level, arguments have appeared about the legal status of other drugs. Cigarettes, among the list, have been appearing in recent news as questions arise on the topic of whether or not cigarettes should be legal.
Originally created in 1865 cigarettes have always held a significant place in American history. Tobacco, used in the production of cigarettes, was a major product driving the early economy. In 1965, a hundred years later, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) began tracking the percentage of adults who smoke cigarettes. The findings were published and in 1965 nearly 50% of adults actively smoked cigarettes, the percentage dropped steadily over time until the most
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Growing up watching media that actively shows smoking normalizes the act of smoking, making it peer acceptable to smoke in middle and high school.
It could be argued that the marketing of cigarettes to youths has been illegal in the US since 1998. Although it is illegal to market cigarettes to youths, that does not stop the producers from trying. A document search done by Cummings (2002) concluded that, while looking at official reports by cigarette companies, companies an “undeniable interest in marketing cigarettes to underage smokers.” This was the result of an electronic search of millions of documents published, as a result of a legal agreement, by cigarette companies. Although companies legally could no longer market to youths, they simply changed their terminology, “several documents indicate that the shift away from the use of the term ‘youth’ in internal correspondence was a matter of policy … when describing the low-age end of the cigarette business please use the term `young adult smoker ' or `young adult smoking market.’” The same search by Cummings and her team found that companies changed their word choice from youth to a legally acceptable term. They never stopped marketing to that group, they only renamed the age category.
Cigarettes should be illegal because they are detrimental to the American economy. A study by Ekpu (2014) found that “As part of the indirect (non-health-related) costs of smoking, the total
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