Every year, America spends about 40 billion dollars on federal and state levels fighting a war against a metaphor, a shadow -
drugs. Countless hundreds of thousands more are spent on ridiculous ad campaigns for the purpose of demonizing drugs and equating the teenagers that use them to Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda. Someone is arrested for a drug law violation every 20 seconds.
Now is the time to ask ourselves: to what end are these billions of dollars going? How did we get into this situation? To answer these questions, a bit of background information is in order.
In 1969, Congress passed the Dangerous Substances Act, which basically made illegal all narcotics, with the exception of alcohol and tobacco. This was the result of the perception of a large increase in drug use during the sixties, which continued through the 80's and up into the 90's. People felt that drugs were invading their country and destroying their society, and because of this perception, penalties were increased.
The whole notion that marijuana is bad arises from a time that goes back to the first marijuana law, passed in 1937. In his congressional testimony, the Commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics said, "Marihuana is an addictive drug which produces in its users insanity, criminality, and death." That whole concept of marijuana being deadly, and inducing insanity and criminality, lasts until this day, and is still perpetuated by organizations such as DARE.
However, most studies refute this idea. In fact, marijuana is much less damaging than tobacco, which is addicting, causes many types of cancer, and has little or no benefits. Marijuana is not physically addicting at all. While tobacco contains nicotine, which makes the body physically yearn for a cigarette, marijuana has no such ingredient. People like to make the case that it is mentally addicting; that people want to have the experience again. However, anything can be mentally addicting. People become "addicted" to food; nonetheless I doubt you will see politicians enacting criminal laws banning the use of food. Marijuana also is not a carcinogen, and so it does not increase the risk that you will get cancer. In fact, marijuana cannot kill outright - there is no such thing as a marijuana overdose, and also, studies show that it does not kill in the long term at all.
Studies have shown that, in middle-aged men, marijuana increases the risk of heart attack almost fivefold. However, this needs to be put into perspective. If the same middle-aged man decides to have sex, he increases his risk threefold. If the same man decides to get off the couch and shovel some snow, the study shows that the risk increases 100-fold. It is no more of an increase than what occurs in normal daily life, and its long-term risks are much less than the already-legal drugs of tobacco and alcohol.
Part of the argument against marijuana is that it impairs judgment. However, it doesn't impair it any worse than alcohol does. Legalizing marijuana would not just be releasing it into the streets for the children to smoke. It would be treated no differently than alcohol and cigarettes. It would be government-regulated, and if anyone went out driving with it, they would get in trouble just like drunk drivers would. If the smoke was causing a problem, filters could be mandated that would filter out what smoke they could. It would be not nearly as harmful as alcohol and tobacco. Another positive impact of this is that it could be highly taxed, just like cigarettes. The government could make billions of dollars in additional revenue every year from taxing marijuana. This capital could be used in prevention programs for children, and rehab programs for adults.
What many people don't realize is that, either way, legal or illegal, people are going to get joints and smoke them. Throughout history, when things like this have been banned, they are brought to the people by one thing: organized crime. The drug cartels are today's mafia. They rake in billions and billions of dollars in the sale of drugs every year, dollars which are used to fund their huge estates and pay off government officials. By legalizing marijuana, we can stop most of this activity. If regular farmers in the U.S. grow it, it will not fund criminals. All of the crimes associated with drug trafficking would be eliminated. Our police would be free to fight more dangerous threats on the streets of cities.
This also brings up another issue, the issue of prisons. Nearly 55% of prisoners in the U.S. are incarcerated due to drug-related charges. There are over 2 million incarcerated people in the United States, and 240,000 additional people are incarcerated for drug offenses every year. That means that 1.1 million people are in prison due to drug-related crimes. Prisoners cost the taxpayers an average of $20,000 per year, meaning that we spend 22 billion dollars on just the incarceration of prisoners. And yet people still get marijuana. Those 22 billion dollars do not even count the additional 40 billion the nation pays to prosecute the "War on Drugs". We fight to stop crime and help society, yet by making these substances illegal, we create more crime because the people who must distribute these things are, by nature, criminals.
The "War on Drugs" is yet another example of this country and the radical religious right feeling the need to impose prohibitions on what it deems to be dangerous. What society needs to realize these prohibitions simply will not work. In the free society we live in, people will always be able to get their drugs, their cigarettes, their abortions, and their alcohol, for that matter. By making substances like these legal, we can benefit society more than hurt it. The disdain society will have for these drugs will be similar to what we have now for cigarettes, and the usage will go down quite a bit from the level it is at now. By making narcotics illegal, we create a society of crime which will not only bring people their drugs, but it will cause murders, assaults, and various other crimes that are by nature associated with organized crime and their criminal activities.
If we made marijuana legal, people would first of all be more likely to go to the legal, safer substance to get their "high", rather than cocaine or ecstasy (drugs that are truly dangerous). This is not to say the most harmful drugs would be eliminated, but their usage would be reduced. It's time that America realizes that prohibition doesn't work. It's time that, instead of treating drug addiction as a crime, America treats it as what it is: AN ADDICTION, a medical problem that needs to be fixed. It's time for us to move forward with our lives.