Our country has slowly come to the realization that marijuana is not the madness-inducing substance people once thought. In fact, many claims of its negative side effects have been disproven through different scientific studies.
So why is marijuana illegal in most states? Is it not time to lift the ban off a plant that is clearly not the harmful drug many have labeled it?
It has been established that marijuana is not lethal. There have been no deaths from its usage; it is nearly, if not completely, impossible, to overdose. There are thousands of deaths related to tobacco and alcohol every year, yet we find it acceptable for these substances to be legal and properly taxed.
The fact is most information that fuels marijuana’s prohibition has been based on prejudices from the 20th century when we didn’t have the scientific explanations for its characteristic effects.
Immigrants introduced the recreational use of marijuana to the United States in the early 1900s, and the drug consequently became associated with fear and bigotry towards Spanish-speaking immigrants. Growing unemployment rates and resentment of Mexican migrant workers lead to unsubstantial “research,” which linked marijuana with violence and crimes often correlated with blacks and Hispanics.
Many prohibition advocates claim that even if marijuana causes little harm, it’s dangerous because it can lead to the use of harder drugs such as heroin, cocaine and LSD. Many users of harder drugs have used marijuana, but most marijuana users never go on to use another illegal drug.
In past decades, trends of marijuana usage have been inversely related to drugs such as cocaine and LSD. Cocaine use increased in the early 1980s as marijuana use was declining. In 1994, less than 16 percent of high school students who had tried marijuana ever tried cocaine. In fact, the proportion of marijuana users trying cocaine has steadily declined every year since 1986.
Marijuana does not create the unproductive, apathetic syndrome many believe it does. Large-scale studies of high school students have found relatively no difference in grade-point averages between marijuana users and non-users. Marijuana also doesn’t cause brain damage. While marijuana may cause physical changes in the brain, it does not kill brain cells or significantly affect its cognitive functions.
Not only is marijuana not the harmful drug it’s been made out to be, but also, it has shown to have therapeutic value.
Studies have shown that it can help relieve pain, soreness, nausea and other symptoms that can’t be treated successfully with common medication. It’s also used as a sleep aid and appetite enhancer for HIV/AIDS patients. Veterans have started using marijuana as a treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder. Scientists have also proved that receptor proteins in marijuana called cannabinoids have the ability to kill and prevent the spreading of cancer cells.
The war on drugs has been a failure and leading the charge has been marijuana’s prohibition.
The government has failed to control the use and domestic production of marijuana. Law enforcement has more important things to do than make 750,000 arrests a year for marijuana possession. That is a waste of time, tax dollars and jail space being used on non-violent crimes.
Despite using criminal penalties to prevent its use for the past 80 years, it is now used by over 25 million every year and the largest cash crop in the country. Instead of letting all the profits be reaped by foreign cultivators, legalizing and taxing it could provide much needed funds for social and public programs.
After only five months of legalization in Colorado, marijuana produced $23.6 million in tax revenue. Colorado law enforcement is predicted to have an estimated $12-60 million in savings a year. Local police departments revealed that crime dropped by more than 10 percent. If Colorado can successfully utilize and control the legalization of marijuana, I see no reason why the rest of the country can’t follow.
Parsa Rafatian is a sophomore from Oxford.
