Legalization Of Marijuana

The legalization of marijuana would greatly lower crime and could be beneficial to some. Marijuana, also know as Cannabis, is the psychoactive part of the plant called Cannabis Sativa. The Herbal form of this drug is made up of the dried leaves. The resinous form of it, which is known as Hashish consists primarily of glandular trichomes collected from the same plant material.

Now there are four ways of consumption. There is smoking, vaporization, eating, and can be made in a tea. The most common ways of smoking marijuana are in smoking pipes or bongs, or rolling joints or blunts. The methods differ by: the preparation of the cannabis plant before use; the parts of the cannabis plant which is used; and the treatment of the smoke before inhalation.

A vaporizer heats the marijuana to 365вЂ"410 Ð'oF, which turns the active ingredients in the marijuana into a gas without burning the plant material. Although hashish is sometimes eaten raw or mixed with water, THC and other marijuana chemicals are more efficiently absorbed into the bloodstream when dissolved in ethanol, or combined with butter or other lipids which are fats.

The Marijuana Tax Act of 1937, the act that effectively made marijuana illegal in the US, was based on the fact that "marijuana caused violent crime and sexual excess." (Grinspoon. 139) These theories have been thoroughly discredited and proven to be unsubstantiated. If marijuana was legal crime would decrease, dealers would be driven out of the market by lower prices, and the government would benefit from the sales tax on drugs. Moreover, "Legalization would give the government more control over the purity and potency of drugs." (Grinspoon. 3)

Drugs are a taboo subject in America, and that is mostly because people are uneducated or misled by government education. Because of this most people feel that someone who uses drugs is a danger to society. When in fact, drug abuse for the most part is only affecting the user and the user's body and therefore should be the user's choice. It is clear to see how Anti-Drug laws eliminate personal responsibility and free choice, leading to government infringement on individual rights.

The War on Drugs has lead to the erosion of our civil liberties by the use of "informers and entrapment, mandatory urine testing, unwarranted search and seizures, and violations of the Posse Comitatus Act (which outlaws the use of military forces to police for civilian law enforcement) are becoming more common. It is clear that our society cannot be both drug-free and free." (Grinspoon. 142) The war on drugs is not only eroding our civil liberties but is also wasting our tax money at a rate of almost "18 billion dollars a year"(Lynch.153). In addition, more than "300,000 people a year are arrested on marijuana charges, contributing to the clogging of our courts and overcrowding prisons." (Grinspoon. 142) All this is also costing tax payers' money on top of the 18 billion a year.

From the early 1970's until present we have heard that marijuana "destroyed brain cells, caused psychoses, lowered testosterone levels ad sperm counts, led to breast development in males... caused chromosome breakage and birth defects." (Ginspoon. 139) However not one of these claims could ever be proven and more and more