Take a moment to imagine a teenager named Jacob. Jacob recently was diagnosed with cancer. He currently suffers through the torturous chemotherapy process. Like many chemo patients, the pain is so great that he has difficulty eating. Keeping a meal down has become a daily trial for him. The only way that he can eat, the only way that he can maintain his survival, is to alleviate this pain, which he does by smoking marijuana. Lately, though, the law has been breathing down his neck, threatening to arrest him due to his unlicensed use of the currently illegal substance.
Jacob is one of many cancer patients that need marijuana to survive. Countless others, while still fortunate in that they have avoided the horror that is cancer, are imprisoned simply because they choose to smoke it. It is intolerable that these citizens, people who have harmed nobody and done no wrong, are incarcerated simply because they chose to consume an illegal substance that really shouldn’t be illegal in the first place. With marijuana illegal, America loses a potential economic blessing, and its citizens lose an inherent human right.
So, why does this drug remain illegal? As studies have shown time and time again, marijuana is less of a detriment to one’s health than tobacco or alcohol, both of which are legal drugs. In a study led by Jack Henningfield of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, a group of esteemed doctors investigated the addictiveness of a wide range of drugs. They unanimously found that marijuana is the least dependent of all of the tested drugs, including caffeine. In terms of physical damage to the body, there has never been a recorded death due to the use of marijuana. When comparing that to over 450,000 counts of death and even more counts of dependence brought about by tobacco and alcohol yearly, one questions why these drugs remain legal while marijuana still is not.
Many of those who remain against legalization do so due to a common misconception that marijuana causes violence. We’ve all heard the news stories about one gang member shooting another due to a dispute over marijuana. Contrary to popular belief, this violence is unrelated to the effect of the substance on its user. Shootings and murders over drugs are more often associated with the black market and the shady drug cartel business. And as history has shown, the criminalization of a drug is precisely what leads to the creation of a black market for it in the first place.
Let me give you a token example of this. When the Eighteenth Amendment was set into effect in 1820, alcohol was prohibited across America, similar to the status of marijuana today. A black market formed, with underground sales of shoddily made beers flaring up around the country. Alongside these illicit sales came violence, a key result of this irresponsible and illicit trading system. When prohibition was repealed with the enactment of the Twenty-First Amendment, the black market for alcohol practically ceased to be. The country was alleviated of its rampant crime and violence. If marijuana was legalized, a similar effect would occur with the violence in our nation today.
Better yet, most of the money circulating in that sector of the black market would go straight into our economic system. Yes, legalization would also serve as a powerful boon to the currently dismal economy. The revenue generated from gas station or supermarket sales of marijuana would be gargantuan, to say the least. And that’s neglecting to mention the removal of incarceration costs for “criminals” who are needlessly arrested for the simple possession or consumption of the substance.
But my argument is not one solely based upon the inconsistency between legal drugs versus illicit drugs or the practical economic advantages that legalization could bring. No, it is much more than that; it is an issue of basic human rights. The inherent right to consume what one wants is impeded so long as illegal drugs are kept illegal. Of course, this right ends when it impedes on another’s right to choose to stay away from it, but I’m not about to take away the liberties of many to control the thoughtlessness of few. Sure, people won’t like it. Many are disgusted by the idea of a joint being smoked in the basement of one’s home. But who are they, so confident in their own dogmatic ideologies, to impose those beliefs in the form of laws on others, stripping them of the very freedoms that this country was founded upon?
This is not to say that all people who are disgusted by marijuana and other drugs think this way. Heck, I’m one of them. But I realize that my opinions don’t outweigh others’ rights. I realize that it is wise to legalize marijuana, a drug healthier than other drugs currently on the market. I realize that it is more cost-effective for the economy. I realize that the change is necessary. For changes like this are what lead to innovation; changes like these create a bigger, better future for society. A change like this would certainly make a bigger and better future for Jacob.
Bibliography:
Harvey, Brett. The Union: The Business Behind Getting High. Edmonton: SuperChannel, 2007
http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/health_effects/tobacco_related_mortality/
http://drugwarfacts.org/cms/?q=node/30
http://drugwarfacts.org/cms/?q=node/30
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