The Broken Spectrum Of The World - Delivered

Last week was a pretty busy week for me. If you aren’t aware, I am a college student and I dedicate quite a bit of time to my schooling, as well as the time I have taken to help campaign this year. On top of that, I read numerous news articles each day and try to keep a pretty good handle on everything going on here in both the US and internationally. Sometimes I come across an article that I want to write about, but with life being so hectic, it either gets shuffled back or lost completely. I did manage to keep an article I found last week, and I felt a compelling need to address some of the comments made in the article and the subject of marijuana in general.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081011/ap_on_re_us/pot_environment

Let me start by saying that it is my personal belief, that our “War on Drugs” is a complete and utter failure and we have wasted a lot of time and money and have jailed many citizens for something that should really be a personal choice, and the government should not infringe on a person’s right to choose how they do treat their own bodies. This article, at least to me, seems like propaganda against marijuana, and people should consider their comments before making them. This piece of the article especially caught my eye. “People light up a joint, and they have no idea the amount of environmental damage associated with it, said Cicely Muldoon, deputy regional director of the Pacific West Region of the National Park Service.”
To begin, we wouldn’t have to be dealing with these drug cartels and worrying about our lands being torn up and polluted if marijuana were legal here in the US. We would not have half the problems that we experience with drugs and drug runners if marijuana were legal. Looking at this from an environmental standpoint, these drug cartels wouldn’t be here tearing up our lands because they would have no reason to. People would grow their own plants instead of buying from dealers that sell marijuana that has come from these cartels, due to the greater quality plants that people themselves could grow without the worry of having toxic chemicals ingested that would possibly be on the cartel’s marijuana.

Another way to look at this, is that we could effectively cripple these drug lords by cutting off their funding. This will make all of us safer and will allow Mexico to better fight against these drug cartels. If these cartels start to fall, the number of all other illegal substances being smuggled into the US will drastically be reduced. That is a major goal of the government and they can achieve it by doing this, otherwise these cartels will always have a customer.

Economically speaking, there is so much untaxed revenue here, the government is missing out on a lot of tax money by not legalizing and regulating marijuana just like alcohol and tobacco. Farmers could grow both marijuana and hemp, which is very useful to many different industries. This also leads to a safer society, no one is out on the streets buying and selling marijuana, as there would be no need for it. This will ultimately make our neighborhoods a lot safer from crime and will also allow the police to concentrate their efforts on preventing real crime.

I couldn’t even begin to conceive how much money we could save in court costs and upkeep for inmates by at the very least, decriminalizing marijuana. Non-violent offenders that are arrested solely for possession present no threat to our society and we have no business locking people up for lighting up. We are ruining people’s lives because we feel the need to govern with only our personal opinion in mind, not with the rights of the individual in mind. The same concept can be applied to several other areas of our society as well.

Marijuana has never killed anyone and is not toxic in any way. Some claim that it is a dangerous drug, though I refuse to believe that it could be more dangerous then prescription drugs, which has been known to kill people when too much has been taken, or if it has been taken with a lot of alcohol. Not to mention the fact that most of these prescription drugs are bad for you. I also don’t believe that doctors would prescribe marijuana as a medicine if it did indeed harm people. Studies have even proved that marijuana does not cause lung cancer like cigarettes do, and if it did, there are other ways to ingest marijuana besides smoking it.

I’ll address one last point, the claim that marijuana is a gateway drug. I agree, it can be a gateway drug, because the same people who sell marijuana, generally sell all of the other drugs that are bad for you. Marijuana doesn’t cause you to buy these other drugs, poor judgment does. Imagine all of these people that sell marijuana are off the streets and the only people left are people who deal the other drugs. People who are wanting to buy marijuana would go to the store and buy it instead of heading down to the corner to see the local dealer. This would effectively end a lot of damaging drug usage and put a lot of drug dealers out of commission.
There is no downside to legalizing, or at the very least, decriminalizing marijuana. The only thing holding us back, are people who are uneducated about marijuana and others who have been taught all of their life that marijuana is a horrible drug that will ultimately end up wrecking your life and very well may kill you. I’m not saying that a person should feel compelled to advocate marijuana, but they shouldn’t force their personal opinion on others by continuing to demonize marijuana and jail people for exercising their right to decide for themselves what they put into their own body.