Marijuana Reform Essay

Marijuana is by far the most commonly used illegal drug. Statistics show that over 70 million Americans have tried Marijuana and over 20 million smoked it last year. So it is safe to assume that although marijuana use may decrease in the years to come, as

This has led many teenagers to switch over to marijuana and by legalizing it the switch to a safer drug would continue and it would also make it cheaper than other illicit drugs. This correlation can be seen with the statistics provided by the NIDA 2011 study. 25% of teens surveyed said they tried marijuana at least once last year and 6.6% of 12th graders admitted to smoking weed daily. Marijuana use has been the highest since 1981, but at the same time cigarette and alcohol usage have reached historic lows. 11.7% of U.S. teens reported having smoked a cigarette in the last 30 days, compared to 12.8 percent in 2010. Also alcohol usage has reduced, the proportion of 8th graders reporting any use of alcohol in the prior 30 days has fallen by about half (from 25% to 13%), among 10th graders by more than one third (from 43% to 27&, and among 12th graders by about one fourth (from 54% to 40%).

Although I admit that there are a lot of loop holes in this argument, I feel that I need to tell everyone how far less dangerous marijuana is than already legal substances such as alcohol or tobacco. Around 50,000 people die each year from alcohol poisoning. Similarly, more than 400,000 deaths each year are attributed to tobacco smoking. Someone would have to smoke over 1400 pounds of marijuana

Marijuana should be legalized nationwide because it can help many different walks of people with their medical issues and maximize revenue for the government. The legalization would positively impact the economy of not only individual cities, but of entire states as well. Medical marijuana is also constantly used as a painkiller in the place of Vicodin and other prescribed drugs. Pot, skunk, kush, mary jane, chronic, weed, grass, herb, hemp and ganga are just a few of the abundance of nicknames that marijuana has. Of Indian origin, the actual drug is green, brown and grey, with incorporation of seeds, leaves and stems. “Some 25 million Americans have smoked marijuana in the past year, and more than 14

According to the Department of Justice, in 2011, 48 percent of the all federal prisoners were incarcerated for drug crimes. Of those sentenced for these drug related crimes, nearly 58 percent were black or hispanic; however, these two groups make up only around 30 percent of the total population of the United States. Overly harsh consequences of drug convictions have helped lead to a 500 percent growth of the current incarcerated population over the past 40 years. This mass incarceration costs the average American about $260 per year on corrections, resulting in the country's annual $80 billion price tag. This so called "War on Drugs" is not how the American justice system should be handling cases of drug crimes. As said by Quigley: “We must never confuse law and

Today, the United States has more people incarcerated than ever before. More than 2 million people in the United States alone are in prison, three times the amount than before there were sentencing guidelines and mandatory minimums (Bernick and Larkin). “The Federal Bureau of Prisons is overcrowded, operating at nearly 40 percent over capacity and housing a large population of non-violent drug offenders, at a significant cost to taxpayer” (Bernick and Larkin). Every year taxpayers are paying to keep inmates incarcerated. The average cost to keep one inmate in prison for a year is around $29,000. In state prisons alone, taxpayers spend over $50 billion dollars

Marijuana has been used by millions of people who continually use it on a regular basis even

Marijuana is the most commonly used illicit drug (19.8 million past-month users) according to the 2013

Cannabis sativa or Marijuana as is commonly known worldwide is a hard drug with adverse side effects to the users. With this reason it is an illegal drug in a majority of parts in the world. However according to research statistics, with this illegality there is still a high rise of both users as well as those initiated into the practice annually with the United Nations placing it first among the illicit substances widely used in the world (UNODC 198). Having worked previously in a number of facilities for juvenile delinquency and correction in California I observed and participated in the numerous ways, methods and tactics employed by the government to reduce the use of cannabis sativa with little success. Instead, the number of crimes

Marijuana has been prohibited since 1968. You would think that because it is illegal, most would stop using the substance. But in fact, in the past 30 years, 10 million people have been arrested for marijuana offenses in the U.S. (Glasser, 2000) With so many people getting in trouble for this

The legalization of marijuana for recreational usage could may be a new trend in America but the Federal government will likely oppose usage through the end of time. The Drug Enforcement Administration's (DEA) stance is that marijuana is an illegal drug and that using this drug whether for medicinal or recreational purposes is illegal. I chose this topic to research because of awareness bright to light prior to the recent elections. Until researching this topic, I was unaware that marijuana usage is legal in some states and that other states were pushing legislation to get

Imagine that your only father is lying in a hospital bed with one of the many life-threatening ailments. The disease has left him with nothing but agonizing pain and he only has a short time to live. Wouldn’t you like to see him live the last weeks of his life not having to deal with the pain? Sure you would, however, this would only be possible by the use of a drug called marijuana. Cancer patients smoke marijuana to dispel the nausea and vomiting they get from chemotherapy and to alleviate pre-treatment anxiety. The drug was first recorded as a medicine in Chinese pharmacopoeia in 2727BC (CNN Interactive). An AIDS patient might use marijuana to improve their appetite, while it also reduces the muscle pain cause by Multiple Sclerosis. It

In 2011, law enforcement arrested 12 million people; of these 1.5 million were drug abuse violations about 12.3%. Half of the 1.5 million were individuals arrested for crimes dealing with marijuana.

less dangerous than tobacco and people smoke less of it at a time. Or you can

The drug war has dramatically affected the number of imprisoned Americans, as well as its prisons. According to DrugSense.Org, 1,576,339 people have been arrested for drug law offenses this year alone. And out of those, 9,261 have been incarcerated. As for marijuana offenses, 747,183 people have been detained. In fact, most of the non-violent offenders sitting in state, local and federal prisons