The Big Debate About Marijuana

Everyone already knows that politics are the biggest debate out there today between the parties fighting about who should be elected for president and why. This is a topic that I would rather not get into mostly because I want to focus my attention on another matter. As most know, another big debate going on in today’s world is whether or not marijuana should be legalized in this country or not, and why. Both sides have good reasoning on why it should be legalized or why it shouldn’t but some don’t know what those reasons are. Personally, I am in favor of legalizing marijuana for various right reasons. The article Marijuana Legalization and Prohibition does a great job in explaining how our country would be affected if marijuana was legalized and how my views compare to the article.

The biggest reason I side for legalization of marijuana is for law enforcement officials to focus on bigger problems. The article states that almost half drug related arrests made each year are for marijuana based offenses. To me this shows that half of these offenses that could have been used to focus on bigger problems like stealing, vandalism, homicide murders, etc., were used for marijuana based problems. Marijuana is not nearly as harmful as other drugs like crack, cocaine, or heroine that have rates going up each year of overdoses and deaths. If you look to see marijuana rates of deaths and overdoses, it would be hard to find information of that because you hardly ever hear of it. My point here is, if marijuana were legalized, law enforcement officials wouldn’t focus on lurking the streets or being undercover to catch people using or distributing marijuana. Instead they would be able to focus on bigger problems such as heroin, cocaine, and other dangerous drugs that actually are known to have death and over dosage rates and are becoming a bigger problem each year.

The second reason is it will save money instead of wasting it. The more people get arrested for marijuana based offenses, the more court sessions there will have to be. This means that people will have to pay to get bailed at the law official’s expense, or to drop the charges. If marijuana were legal, then people wouldn’t get arrested and have to go to court to pay money for these reasons and can instead save it.

The article states different ways that legalization of marijuana will affect our country. The first one says it will create more jobs, which is true. Since marijuana is a crop, it can give job to people for the crop industry and it will also make money for the crop industry. I agree with this because instead of people illegally making money for distribution of marijuana and having to hide about selling it, it could be distributed legally through the crop industry and it can make this country a lot of money. Also, the money made won’t go to waste because the money that people make selling marijuana illegally now a days, are kept for themselves and they decide whatever they want to do with it. Legalizing marijuana will make an income for this country, and that income could be used for the right reasons instead of for the wrong.

The last but big reason the article focuses on is reducing harm for Latinos, Hispanics, and African Americans. The rate of use or distribution of marijuana between Latinos, Hispanics and African Americans are the same or very similar to Whites. There is a problem that needs to be focused about the racism law officials tend to have, although not all of them, on having higher rates of arresting Latinos, Hispanics and African Americans compared to how many white people are arrested. This is harmful to them because they are more vulnerable to be arrested than white people are which is wrong and most don’t even use or sell marijuana but they are still just as vulnerable as those who do. This means that the innocent people who are Latinos, Hispanics and African Americans and don’t use, sell or distribute marijuana are still more suspicious to law enforcement because of their race. It should be frowned upon because law officials should focus on white people selling and/or using marijuana just the same as anyone else of other races. Legalizing marijuana will be less harmful to those of other races because they wouldn’t have to worry about law officials being too hard on them and be able to go about their life feeling less intimidated.

I know there will always still continue to be controversy on the legalization of marijuana in this country, but after reading this article, it made me realize even more reasons why it should be legalized. It has so many positive effects and could bring good outcomes. Law officials would be able to focus more on bigger problems that this country has instead of spending half of their time arresting people for marijuana incidents rather than heroin or other drug related incidents. The bigger problems need to be looked into more instead of being so focused on marijuana all of the time. Marijuana isn’t the problem. But how many other problems are out there that are being avoided because of a marijuana arrest? Now that worries me. Which presidential candidate is in favor of legalizing marijuana and has a good outlook for it? Here is a great article that tells some of the candidates views on the legalization.

 

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