What If Marijuana Was Legal? - What would happen? Should it be made legal?

1 out of 100 American adults are in jail. When you see that figure, what comes to mind? You may ask yourself, “Why are so much people in jail?” One of the big answers is: Marijuana. In the year 2006, 43.9 percent of the 1,889,810 total arrests for drug violations were for marijuana- a total of 829,627. Out of that 829k, 738,916 people were arrested for just marijuana possession alone. Think of how much it would have risen since then? In the recent news report about the jail rates it said on average a state spends 25k per inmate. That’s around 18,472,900 dollars- If they where arrested all in the same state, since some sates spend even more, or less per inmates. Oh, yes. Don’t forget the cost of fighting Marijuana “States spent $42.89 billion on Corrections in 2005 alone. To compare, states only spent $24.69 billion on public assistance.” So, in 2006 to around 2005, if you add all that up, the cost of jailing the inmates, and the correction costs: it all adds up to more then 42,908,472.900 being spent! Those 829,627 people did nothing wrong, they did no violent act. If free they’d be any normal working tax payer in the US. The point of this article is to show you that Marijuana isn’t the work of a bad force. Rather the work of a good force but clouded by the government and its drug laws. If we stopped spending all that money, we could put it into something that’d help the economy. Give it to schools, or help feed some poor people. This war on drugs has done nothing to stop the flood of drugs entering the US. “Did alcohol use decrease during the Alcohol Prohibition? No.” in fact “Consumption by women and children increased dramatically” Today we’re seeing the exact same thing when it comes to the drug war. “Every hour spent investigating a drug user or seller is an hour that could have been used to find a missing child…”

"I'm in favor of legalizing drugs. According to my value system, if people want to kill themselves, they have every right to do so. Most of the harm that comes from drugs is because they are illegal."
- Milton Friedman


Every year tons of people die from overdose of sedatives and prescription painkillers like Vicodin and OxyContin eather accidental or on purpose. “OxyContin has been blamed for hundreds of deaths across the country in recent years” And to think these are the drugs that we look up to these day. But you know what you never see? Someone dying from overdose of marijuana.


“In strict medical terms marijuana is far safer than many foods we commonly consume. For example, eating 10 raw potatoes can result in a toxic response. By comparison, it is physically impossible to eat enough marijuana to induce death. Marijuana in its natural form is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man.” http://www.drugwarfacts.org/medicalm.htm : Source: US Department of Justice, Drug Enforcement Agency, "In the Matter of Marijuana Rescheduling Petition," [Docket #86-22], (September 6, 1988), p. 57.


Every 6.5 seconds a current or former smoker of tobacco dies, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Around 5.4 million deaths a year are caused by tobacco. “Over 438,000 Americans (18.1 percent of all deaths) die because of smoking each year. Secondhand smoke kills about 50,000 of them.” India has the highest rate -“900,000 Indians a year die from smoking-related diseases, that's nearly one in 10 of all deaths in India. Half of Indian males use tobacco and it is becoming more popular with younger people.“ It is also a huge cause of lung cancer. Yet you still see nothing about deaths from Marijuana. If anything should be illegal, it should be Tobacco. When addicted to tobacco, it’s one of the hardest things to quit. Even people that are close to death from smoking tobacco keep smocking it! According to a study I read about in a college report done on Marijuana: “Studies tend to suggest that weed is less addictive then chocolate and more addictive then sardines” With Tobacco it’s really easy to become physically addicted. Yet, “there has never been any evidence to suggest cannabis (Marijuana) is physically addictive” But, as with anything in the world you can mentally get addicted to Marijuana, just as you would become mentally addicted to watching T.V. When you’re physically addicted, it’s a lot harder to quit, and you can easily become “sick”, or be in great pain. With a mental addiction, it’s pretty much just a habit. But those are easy to quit compared to quitting when you’re physically addicted.

A lot of people now these days aren’t aware of the health facts about Marijuana. Because all of the facts we get from school and papers, where written in such a way to get a drug free America. How can you trust facts that are written JUST to stop people from doing it? You need facts from a source that’s not influenced, as I bet you know from doing school reports. What the government said all those years ago, that Marijuana caused cancer, and killed brain cells, couldn’t be farther from the truth. To this day, there has been no reported case of lung caner from weed, and in fact, some studies show that weed protects some brain cells if used right. Of curse, as with anything if used too much can have harmful effects. Just as with TV, or video games. The healthiest choose would be to smoke nothing at all. Since tar can get in your lungs. But there’s ways to smoke marijuana, get the effects, but no tar, rather then the normal way of smoking anything. Marijuana works as an anti depressant; it works better and is healthier for you then the standard of medication out in the market that you get from your doctor. Not only does weed help with depression, it can also bring up creative energy, reduces nausea, and make you hungry. If you have an eating disorder that makes you not eat as much, Marijuana would have a really good effect for you, making you eat more then you might in a day. It can also just help you with relaxation, and make you more tuned into sound. There may be a drug on the market that contains the main active chemical in weed (THC) but it doesn’t give you the full benefits of the plant. It’s the THC mixed with the thounds of chemicals witch makes it work to its fullest extant.

Tons of people believe that Marijuana would lead to other and bad drugs. This may be true to some people. But, if it where true, you’d think that if legal, everyone would start smoking weed, and tons of people would move on to harder drugs, right? Wrong. If you look at the country of Holland, where Marijuana is legal, their rates of Marijuana is much less then our rates, and Holland has amongst the lowest rates in the world of hard drug use, overdoses, drug crime, murders, and anything else horrible that relates to drugs. Tons of studies show that a non-criminal approach is the best for lowering the drug rates, and lowering the rates of Marijuana use. Humans work wonders under as much freedom as they can get, we become smart. America was built under the idea of freedom, and everyday I see something that shows me we’re slowly losing it. This article was not made to encourage you all to smoke. This was made to tell you that it’s not as bad as people think. Just because someone breaths in something doesn’t make them a low life. It just means they’re being free to themselves: they’re having fun. Most of us have 70 to 80 years, might as well learn to not worry, right? Might as well be happy.

“American needs fewer laws, not more prisons.”
-James Bovard

“More laws, less justice”
-Marcus Tullius Cicero (42 BC)

if mj was legal there would be world peace, and I don't even smoke the stuff