Should Marijuana be Legalized?

Why would our government allow an evil such as prescription opiates to plague people’s lives while men and women are persecuted and prosecuted for smoking a harmless plant in the safety of their own homes, causing no injury to anyone? Apparently,
for some unreasonable reason, the moral majority and power-players in our lives began to see mind-altering substances as an unacceptable pastime, and a war has been declared against the drug culture as a result.

The War on Drugs is based on the illusoryconcept of a drug-free society. The fault in this thinking is that never in the historyof our species has there been such a society.

Drugs are, were, and will always be a prevalent part of the human experience, so the goal of eradicating their use through fines and incarceration is absurd. Persecution
of drug users has not stopped the rising tide of usage. It has merely forced drugs into the dark underbelly of the illicit-trade market, which causes infinitely more harm than good to the people of the world.

Now, just as in the alcohol prohibition of the 1920’s, instead of being regulated by the government, crime-lords and killers are in control of the drug industry. Today, the business of bud is shrouded by maliciousintent and criminal action, and the products on the streets, consequently, are seldom clean and safe. However, people continue to use drugs and continue to profit from their manufacture and distribution. The government has accomplished nothing except the forfeiting of any internal control over the industry it may have had, and the sole beneficiary of this foolish and dangerousoversight is organized crime.

No one is a stronger advocate for the prohibition than the drug kingpins who are making obscene amounts of money as a resultof their unique willingness to provide consumers with these illicit substances. After all, legalization would only serve to sever drug-profits to these syndicates. Yet, our government continues to naïvely facilitatethe conditions that allow crime to thrive.

If our government were to legalize marijuanaand assume control of its cultivation and distribution, society would benefit in many ways. For starters, organized crime would be crippled because no one would choose to purchase a legal substance from these shady characters when it could just as easily be obtained from trustworthy Uncle Sam. Also, the prison and court systems would be relieved of the burden of innumerablenon-violent drug offenders, which would alleviate billions of taxpayers’ dollarsspent on housing these inmates.

But what’s to be done about children gaining access to marijuana? Certainly it’s not moral to allow minors to use psychedelicsubstances. I believe this is correct, just as minors are not permitted to possess alcohol or tobacco. Under the discretion of legal distributors, marijuana would not be nearly as available to children as it is now in the hands of criminal salesmenwho don’t give age a second thought and simply want to make fast cash. The youth of our nation would be safer and placed further from the reach of drugs as a result of marijuana’s legalization.

To win the War on Drugs, we must arm ourselves with an arsenalof information concerning marijuana, and we must remain intelligent in our arguments. The disparaging of law enforcement, denial of inherent health risks, and continued drug-addled stupiditywill not benefit anyone but those who seek to oppress marijuanausers.

The only reasonable pursuit in regards to our government’s negative stance on marijuana is control and regulation of the drugs that pervade our society. Until then, nothing will be achieved but the willful oppression of our nationsown people.

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