Marijuana Legalization

Legalizing Marijuana

Among the top controversies in America, one of the biggest is obviously the legalization of marijuana. Of course, as we have grown up, we hear of the dangers of drugs; we hear of the habit forming, brain degrading, and crime causing drugs of America. Within that spectrum of drugs, we hear of the earth bound, natural herb entitled Cannabis. Cannabis, or henceforth dubbed pot, weed and marijuana, is a natural psychoactive plant which contains the molecule tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC. THC provides many benefits to the human body such as the stimulation of the mind and body, relieves aches and pains, stimulates hunger and provides a certain sort of peace with everything. The downside of it is minimal and the habitual need is ambiguous. If the preceding statements are true, as the copious amount of studies have inferred, the logical thing to do would be to legalize marijuana.

Overall, the problems people have with marijuana are as follows: it allegedly is a gateway drug from which you bound upon into harder drugs such as cocaine, heroin and prescription drugs; it allegedly causes irreversible damage to the brain which alter intelligence, ambition and positive contributions to society; lastly, it is allegedly very addictive which causes psychological, physiological and sociological harm. However, many prestigious institutions have conducted studies that directly show the above statistics about the prolonged use of marijuana to be false.

In retrospect, the remembrance of how we believed marijuana smokers to be based on the propaganda that was strewn about was mightily unjust. It seemed that the anti-drug campaigns preached that the use of marijuana resulted in “low life, high school drop out, low intelligence, low inspiration, willpower, work ethic” (D.A.R.E.org. Also something that the D.A.R.E program presents is that parents should look for the following qualities in their teenagers to find a marijuana problem: neglected appearance, poor hygiene, “sense that the person will ‘do anything’ to use again”, emotional instability, secretive phone calls, sick more frequently, change in appearance, change in peer group, hyperactive or hyper-aggressive behavior and depression(D.A.R.E.org) . From what that sounds like, it is apparent that they think that people who smoke marijuana are equivalent to a typical heroin junkie who is severely craving another hit as it apparently the same signs as a heroin addiction. First of all, among all those qualities listed, the one that is the most redundant is the hyperactive or hyper aggressive behavior. Marijuana is not a typically a stimulant and it is widely accepted that it does not generally cause aggressive behavior. Also, people were under the impression that with marijuana being highly addictive and habit forming and that the aforementioned effects were irreversible. However, the General