by Melanie Salomon

Created on: March 04, 2009

Does the U.S. need to boost it's economy? Do we want to spend our time and money getting crack off the streets, or keep on wasting it all chasing the pot dealers? A marijuana user will usually spend about $20 a week on their drug. While a crack user has a $100 a day habit and will steal to meet their quota. Marijuana is not a drug that controls your mind to believe you "need" it to get through your day. You don't see potheads standing on the corner begging you to give them a handout for their next hit.

Now let's address the question, "Won't marijuana still be grown and sold illegally?". When alcohol was prohibited you had to go to your bootlegger, same thing as a drug dealer. Now that alcohol is legal you don't hear of anymore bootlegger busts. Same would go with marijuana. Maybe in the beginning their would still be local dealers trying to sell, but why would people risk going to jail when it's perfectly legal to get the same stuff down the street at the store? that would make no sense at all. We would be able to tax the sales and regulate what age group can buy it. No drug dealer can live off of high schoolers profits alone. In the Netherlands where marijuana is sold in regulated establishments with rules. They can have their licenses taken away if they are caught selling to kids. And only 9% of secondary students are users, in America 20.2% of students are users.

Is marijuana a gateway drug? According to the Institute of Medicine, in a report commissioned by the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, "There is no evidence that marijuana serves as a stepping stone [to other drugs] on a basis of it's particular physiological effect." There are many, many marijuana users out there who have never tried any other drugs. Marijuana and other illegal drugs have totally different affects on people. Most of the other drugs are stimulants and marijuana is not. Marijuana relaxes you. It does not make you want to go out and find some other drug that would make you feel the total opposite of how you feel when you smoke marijuana.

Did you know that in a recent studa UCLA refirrmed that extensive scientific evidence shows that cannabinoids actually block tumor growth. Why would we keep something illegal if it can help you. We have so many things that are legal that seriously harm people everyday. How many people die from tobacco related sicknesses and cancer every year? How many people die from alcohol related diseases every year? What about the number of people who are killed and kill themselves by drunk driving every year? Now have you heard of even one person who died from a marijuana related sickness or incident?

So how can we justify marijuana being illegal? The commercials on television are a bunch of bologna. There are no studies proving any of the old myths are true. If you smoke marijuana you will not turn into a lazy nobody, and you will not go out looking for stronger drugs. It will not give you lung problems, marijuana has been known to bother bronchitis, but keep a vaporizer around and you'll have no added problems.

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