Essay/Term paper: Legalization of marijuana

Essay, term paper, research paper:  Alcohol and Drugs

Legalization of Marijuana


One debate that keeps coming up time and again is the topic of the
legalization of marijuana. Marijuana is the most widely used illegal drug.
Nearly one in three teenagers have at least tried marijuana by the time they
graduate high school. It is also gets the most publicity for its legalization.
Over thirty pro-legalization organizations have been displayed on the Internet
alone. The legalization of marijuana , although popular by today's drug culture,
would be a very dangerous and detrimental act for the United States to take
part in. Not only would it destroy families, but would also lead to the fall of
our economy.

Pro-legalization organization argue the fact that legalization would
result in the decrease of crime rates in our cities and towns, but in actuality
almost eighty-two percent of all violent crime that involves drugs don't involve
marijuana. The fact remains that crime would still inhabit the streets if
marijuana was to be legalized. The organizations base there theory on the
success that the Netherlands has had with reduction of crime due to the wide-
spread legalization of marijuana. The differences between New Amsterdam and the
United States is great due to a different structured economy and different
cultures. This differences would prove to be the reason for their success and
the United States failure.

Legalization would also be very dangerous to the economy. The United
States economy is a rather shaky one. The introduction of such a huge industry
would be enough to crash our country into a depression. The market for
marijuana would be very extensive. Between the marketing of marijuana and
profit from taxes would generate would be too much for the United States to
endure in. The fact that marijuana would be legal would add another thing for
the people just another thing for them to spend their money on. We already have
enough people on welfare and under the poverty line, this would create even more.


Families would also feel the effects of a society that allows its people
to live their life "high." Marijuana makes a person depressed and sometimes
anti-social. This causes the decrease in communication through-out a house hold.
Communication is what keep a family close and involved in each other's life.
The effects of marijuana and other drugs destroys families enough now, but if it
were to become legal then that number would raise and so would the number of
broken homes. We are at a time when our family structure has already been
destroy and where we should be working to rebuild that important aspect of life.
Legalizing marijuana would not be the way to do that.

Marijuana is famous for making a person lazy and lackadaisical. We are a
point in our country when we have the most amount of unemployment. When already
thousands of people are happy living off welfare, we want to make people even
lazier? This is not to say that all people that are unemployed are lazy or
smoke pot for that matter, but if people were more lazy then we already are, it
could only mean bad things for the development of our country. In an age of
technological advancements, why slow down progress with pot?

Although it could be argued that marijuana should be legal for everyone
to have, the argument loses to the hard-core facts that can be seen be common
sense. Marijuana is a drug that remains illegal. Users can continue to buy it
on the streets, where it belongs. Prohibition is something that should remain
for the good of the country.