Why do you think Marijuana should or should not be legalized?

Answer 1

Great! So now when I'm driving down the highway, instead of just your run-of-the-mill alcoholics, cell-phone addicts, really too-old-to-be-driving old senior-citizens, illegal aliens que no sabe o intiende la ley, and adolescent idiots, I get to dodge the dope-heads. Sounds like a great idea! The degree of difficulty increases to the next level......I'm getting good at this game!

Answer 2

I think that marijuana should be legalized. Legalizing marijuana would eliminate drug dealers or at least make it less profitable for drug dealers. This would in my opinion, decrease some of the violence associated with illegal drug dealing. Also, marijuana and alcohol are both drugs, but the penalties for using are different. Make them both legal or both illegal so that the penalties are the same. Any type of drug is harmful to society. In my profession, I daily see the harmful effects of drugs (alcohol and other drugs) inflicted on innocent children. Since alcohol is a legal drug, treatment is covered by many insurance policies. If legalizing marijuana would assist in obtaining treatment as opposed to punishment, which does no one any good, then I am all for legalizing marijuana. I wish that no one had the need to use any type of drug. But, the reality is that a person that wants to use drugs will do so whether it is legal or illegal. The fact that marijuana is illegal does not deter drug use, so what is the point? Hint: the prison industry is big business.

Answer 3

It should be legalized. I don't know where some of these people are getting their ideas of the way marijuana smokers act, but they're stereotyping. I recently quit smoking pot. I've been clean for 43 days now. I graduated high school with a 4.0. I smoked in my own home so it's not like I was one of those people that drove around high. Another person, my fiance has smoked for about 10 years. The longest he's went without working was 3 months and that was 5 years ago. Marijuana would help many disorders that we have today. There should be nothing illegal about smoking it in your own home.

Answer 4

O let me count the ways.
First off the reason mj is illegal in the first place has to do with a patent on nylon rope and the par for the course greed of the oil magnets. At the time the most commenly used fiber for rope. In order to propigate the nylon pantent, they had to get rid of the hemp. So, then came "Reefer Madness" and other such films that where pure propoganda, also par for the course. I highly recommend picking up an un-edited copy and realize the rediculousness of the claims. They preyed opun the fears that they created. I have never seen or heard of anyone lighting up and going to commit an act of violence, and I am from the school of hard knocks, I would know.

Now, there are a few positive things that could come out of legalization.
1> Taxes. The excise tax that could be applied to the product could be used for drug programs for more serious addictions and education, health care or food bank programs.
2> Deforestation Because of the 'weed' like nature of the plant fields could be put in the NW area where heavy logging has occured to regenerate the soil. Having lived many years in the Rockies, the problem with deforstation is that once the trees are removed the nutirient rich soil at the surface runs off with the snow melt and rains. Something has to re-root in the area, and trees don't grow that fast. I think a mixture of the two would do some good.
3> Agriculture. Just as the bow weavel made us move from cotton to tabacco, there has to be a movement in agriculture. The croping of MJ could ad billions to agriculture.
4>Medicinal. In the NW it is documented by many that the mediinal values of mj can be benificial for: Depression, anxiety, pain, headaches, glocoma, nasea, the lest goes on. Plus it is known that using a light halucenegin like THC stimulates the entire brain evenly, where other narcotics overstimulate a singe area. The reason this is good is that when your logical and creative halves are working in unison, it is easier to formulate thereoms. This can go two ways, if your creative part is stronger it may come off as paranoid, but if the anylitical part is stronger, it may appear incitefull.
5> Let out the people who are locked up and there will be that tax releave and would probably take care of the overpopulation problem in the current prison system.

In conclusion, I can say that I have had the privilege of working with some of the smartest people in the country, PHD holders who I brainstormed with, and pot-heads that I have philosiphized with.

Personally, I think pot-heads have more common sense.

Answer 5

It should. It has been proved that rises in marijuana usage correlate to decreases in alcohol usage. This is significant since alcohol has much more sever health risks and more importantly Alcohol is much more likely to cause a traffic accident than marijuana. With the number of DUIs and DUI related deaths in this country, marijuana can be viewed as a way to save lives. Because of this many Universities that traditionally treated marijuana offenses as much more sever that Alcohol offenses are changing their policies to treat them both with equal punishments for infractions. This trend started several years ago in Colorado after I think it was seven students were killed in one semester due to drunk driving at one University.
Based on the facts it appears as though marijuana could prevent hundreds of deaths a year. I was actually so interested in this topic I contacted a SEC school's campus police chief, who actually confirmed that this idea is not just some liberal propaganda, but actually contains merit.

Answer 6

It should be legalized for the following reasons:

1. We are spending too much effort trying to arrest people for doing it when we should be fighting real crime.

2. we are putting people in jail as criminals just for smoking a little bit of it. this is a terrible waste and is expensive for the taxpayer.

3. It is not a physically addictive drug. Its the only nonphysically addictive drug I know of. In other words: you'll never need a fix.

4. It has some medicinal properties.

5. People don't break the law by getting rowdy drunk when the smoke. Actually they get very passive. So it's far better than alcohol.

Answer 7

Marijuana shouldn't be legalized. If it was, the people who do smoke the stuff, would smoke it all of the time and not care where. The people who do not smoke it would suffer because they would have to smell it and get contact highs.

Although, if they did legalize it, they should make it so people can only do it in the comfort of their own home. It shouldn't be allowed in public.

Answer 8

They might as well go ahead and legalize it. If they legalize it then by doing so they (the government) can tax it when it is sold, thus bringing in more money for the economy, plus everyone who uses it will be doing so legally. If they don't people will continue to use it and sell it and smuglle it and will continue to get caught and sent to jail/prison, in which we the people will have to pay for that out of our taxes. By all these folks going to jail/prison for dealing and using marijuana, it will over crowd our prisons and jails thus leaving limited room for the more serious criminals..

Answer 9

I didn't bother to read all of the previously listed 16 answers, however, marijuana was federally legalized (along with heroin) during the turn into the previous century. It didn't work then, and while I realize its fallacious to argue based upon that merit, what makes anyone think it will work now?

Answer 10

I believe that marijuana should be legalized, for a whole myriad of reasons. The first is that it is no worse for you than smoking cigarettes in terms of lung damage, and does not contain nicotine (as cigarettes do), which make cigarettes even more poisonous to smoke. It's also less addictive than smoking cigarettes.

Weed is a better, safer way to become intoxicated than with alcohol, because you can't OD on it. I should say, actually, you can OD on it, if you manage to smoke a whole roomful in one night, which is physically impossible.

Many gangs that are based on the selling of drugs, although they may sell crack or heroin or other harder drugs, make most of their money from selling weed. If weed were legal, and if, like alcohol there were regulations and licenses to sell, many gangs would financially implode, and would not be able to employ the number of pushers that they do. There would be less drug and gang based violence in our cities, because many gangs would simply not be able to afford to exist anymore.

People want to keep weed illegal because they want to keep it out of the hands of children, but if weed were legal it would be harder for teens to get ahold of it. When I was in High School, for instance, there was a guy who sold weed who had the locker next to mine, and another who I had German class with, so weed was pretty easy to buy. To get alcohol or cigarettes, one either had to have a fake ID, find a really shady liquor store (hard in a Boston!), steal from ones parents, or get some older person to buy the alcohol for you. Getting beer was a process, getting weed was as easy as going to homeroom.

Weed is not a dangerous drug. I don't know why it first became illegal, but it is time for the government to stop trying to restrict what individuals do with their lives, especially regarding this relatively harmless drug.

Answer 11

By legalizing marijuana we would be taking this out of the hands of crooks and the substance could be taxed and we also could be sure of the quality of the product. The price would most likely be lower.