Within the next decade, maybe sooner, I believe that marijuana will be legal throughout the United States, for both medicinal and recreational use. At least I hope it will be. It's time.
I say this as someone who has never been high, and as someone who does not plan to use marijuana unless there is a medical reason to do so. I am not encouraging getting high, but I am encouraging common sense. And in my view, common sense includes the legalization of pot.
Let's start with the low-hanging fruit here. It baffles me that there are places where marijuana is not legal for medical use. Morphine is legal, but not marijuana? Really? It can help cancer patients, those who struggle with pain, those who need to increase their appetite, and a slew of others. Used properly, marijuana is a drug that can help a lot of people. At the very least, I see no valid argument against the legalization of medical marijuana.
And the case for legal recreational use is pretty strong too. Where I went to college, marijuana may as well have been legal. It was prevalent, to say the least. For the most part, people who got stoned were pretty chill, but every now and then you would come across someone who became paranoid or mixed other drugs with marijuana and had a not-so-good reaction. But it was during college that I realized something. By itself, marijuana is less harmful than most legal drugs. People get very sick from drinking too much alcohol. Many people die every year from overdosing on alcohol. Cigarettes kill in many ways too, although more slowly. And how many people overdose on marijuana every year? None. You don't die from smoking too much weed. If you smoke too much weed, your performance in life will probably be greatly hindered, but you're not going to end up sick or dead from it. You'll be unemployed and hungry maybe, but alive. Alcohol, while legal (as it should remain, and if you think otherwise, please read the history of prohibition), is far more dangerous than weed.
Keeping marijuana illegal because it's a "gateway drug" falls flat, because what the heck does that even mean? Yeah maybe people who experiment with it are more likely to experiment with other drugs, including harder drugs that are very dangerous and can kill you the first time you try them, but reefer is not exactly the cause of that, is it? And do we really think that if it becomes legal, suddenly a lot more people are going to start using it? Let's be honest, if you want weed now, even though it's illegal in all but a few states, it is extremely easy to procure. Making it legal isn't going to make a whole bunch of people suddenly decide that they now want to start smoking it, or vaping it, or eating delicious baked goods with pot as an ingredient.
But there would be some impact on society if it were legal, right? Let's see... A lot less arrests every year, leaving the police free to focus on REAL crimes. Oh, and prisons would be less crowded. That means less of our tax dollars going to pay for non-violent criminals to be put in prison. Hmm, and I guess government regulation of it would mean less bad batches. Oh, and taxes. Huge taxes. Our government probably can't be trusted to spend it, but maybe it will be a step in the right direction of actually balancing a budget, because that creates a whole lot of money going to the government. And it takes a whole lot of money out of the hands of drug dealers. If someone wants to deal it, it could be done legally and become a legitimate above ground business. I guess that means that a bunch of legitimate jobs would have to be created. And that means the government can tax those earnings as well...
Those are all positive things. Let's think of some negative ones. Well, I guess even though it would only be legal for adults, maybe kids could end up getting access to it. But that already happens. Maybe more of them will get it somehow? Or no? I don't know. Um... Oh, yeah, well, it's addictive to a lot a people. So, yeah, there's that. That's definitely bad. And if we legalize it, then, well, I guess it's still just as addictive to just as many people. Hmm... Never mind. I give up. What were our elected officials smoking when they made this stuff illegal anyway?
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