Marijuana: Not dangerous nor likely to become legal
Brian Bernadel
Marijuana is one of the most controversial substances in America today. It has people divided centrally over its use and criminalization. Several states had some sort of marijuana initiative on their ballots this year. That is a prime example of the fact that most citizens of this country support marijuana.
The University of Michigan published information from the Pew Monitoring the Future Survey and it shows an increase in marijuana use among young people.
It verifies that students in high school, especially juniors and seniors, are using marijuana.
They may not be using regularly but they are definitely using, at least occasionally.
Marijuana is also classified the same as much more dangerous drugs like heroin by the Drug Enforcement agency (DEA).
The reason marijuana has been labeled a “gateway drug” is because when most people try it for the first time, they see that most of what they have been told about marijuana is a lie. Movies like Refer Madness have made it seem like using marijuana will cause hysteria and delusions.
Often users are willing to try other substances because they think, “If they lied to me about weed, they’re probably lying about meth.”
But if there are more people that support marijuana than people who are against its use, why does it continue to be beaten at the voting poles?
When the votes are counted and a marijuana initiative has been defeated, one can easily find a person who believes marijuana users are too lazy to make it to the voting poles.
It seems that this may be somewhat true. Many excuses were given on Nov. 2, such as, “I don’t know where my polling place is,” or “I got an early ballot but I think it is too late to turn it in.”
Marijuana continues to be criminalized throughout the country even though examples from other countries prove legalization may be the best solution.
The death rate caused by crime is 1.22 percent in Amsterdam compared to in Arizona alone where there is a rate of 5.94 percent violent crimes for 2010.
The fact is that unlike alcohol, if marijuana were legal it would be very difficult to regulate and privatized prisons have made a lot of profit from the criminal activity associated with marijuana.
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