by Melanie Salomon

Created on: March 04, 2009   Last Updated: June 29, 2009

Do you believe marijuana should be legal? Well first of all, before you decide, I'd like to give you a little homework. I would like for you to look up the statistics on someone becoming diagnosed with a deathly medical concern caused to their marijuana use. Now next, I would like you to how many people have gotten hurt or killed because they were out smoking their marijuana. Then look up how often this happens when alcohol is involved, and how many people die every day from completely legal tobacco and alcohol.

Now don't get me wrong I'm not saying that everyone should be able to walk down the street and buy some marijuana from their local drug dealer like they do now. But, why is it we are able to walk down the street and buy all the beer we want. Beer and other alcohols cause major liver damage and many other medical harms to your body. And...how many times have you seen two drunk people beating each other to a pulp. And, the saddest of all, how many babies, mommas, daddies, aunts, and uncles have heard about dying just because Joe Blow down the street was driving around drunk? When these other guys you see that are intoxicated by marijuana's biggest problem is the giggles and munchies.

There are so many people living in this world also who get such a bad rap for smoking marijuana because they have failed drug tests positive for T.H.C. Did you know that smoking one marijuana cigarette can cause you to fail a drug test 15 days later? Other drugs that are really bad for you only take a few days to clear out of you system. Did you know that the cannabis in marijuana is thought to be a huge help for cancer tumors? Also if we were able to regulate marijuana, it would be harder for the high school teenagers to get it, because no drug dealer asks for I.D.

Marijuana use is already prevalent. Nearly 100 million Americans admit having used marijuana, and nearly 15 million use it at least monthly, according to the U.S. government.2 By most measures, marijuana use is as common or more common today than when President Richard Nixon declared the "war on drugs" in 1970. The question isn't whether there will be marijuana use, but how to handle marijuana so as to minimize harm - not just to marijuana users but to all of us. Our current laws do not control marijuana, but they that 100% of the profits from marijuana go to drug dealers and gangs insted of our dying economy!

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