Bowlblaze

Wrote this for my english course, any feedback would be greatly appreciated.
Discrimination is the greatest factor contributing to the prohibition of cannabis. The very roots of marijuana prohibition in the United States stem from the racism prevalent at the time. Despite many studies showing that cannabis is harmless, governments still run advertising campaigns playing to people’s greatest fears and prejudices, whether they are racist or anti-communist in nature. The role of discrimination against marijuana users today is greater than ever; from the terminally ill who could use marijuana to help ease their pain to the middle-class businessman who enjoys a quick joint after work, all are shunned by the government, and by much of society.
Cannabis has been proven through countless clinical studies to be relatively harmless, no more addictive than caffeine or any other legal substance, and impossible to overdose from. There has never been a recorded case of a person dying from an overdose of marijuana. Organizations such as freevibe, however, distribute propaganda accusing marijuana of making people get pregnant or shoot their friends. People simply do not perform in this manner under the influence of marijuana. When someone is under the influence of marijuana, they generally feel relaxed and more creative. Marijuana simply does not people more violent; in fact, it generally makes people substantially less violent in nature.
White Americans along the Mexico-Texas border were wary of Mexican customs, Including smoking marijuana. Eventually, the El Paso government enacted a law banning marijuana; this law, however, was more an attempt to control Mexicans than to control the marijuana itself. Thusly, the attitude towards marijuana is nothing more than poorly concealed racism; this attitude has no place in world where racism is frowned upon by the masses.
Early jazz musicians frequently used marijuana, as it made them more creative artistically. However, they were almost all black and were in an extremely racist period of history; “between 1900 and 1917 over 1,100 lynchings were recorded” (Herer, The Emperor Wears No Clothes). Not knowing that marijuana was the same thing as many white people smoked at hashish bars, many politicians banned marijuana, thinking that it made African-Americans think that they were as good as white people. They played upon the general public’s paranoia that blacks would always try to woo white women if given the chance, and made marijuana seem to be the main cause of this unjustified paranoia. Prohibition quickly became law in many American jazz centres because of the racist beliefs so abundant in early twentieth-century America.
Marijuana has many medicinal purposes, including treatment of glaucoma, cancer, irritable bowel syndrome, tourettes syndrome, insomnia, and a host of other illnesses. Many people are suffering today because of laws prohibiting use of cannabis, even for medicinal purposes. Instead, they are often prescribed harsh, addictive medications that often lead to unpleasant side affects. Although medicinal marijuana is supposedly legal in Canada, police frequently raid “compassion clubs,” often arresting the leaders for distribution. The only reason these compassion clubs exist is because there is no other way many people can get the medicine they need short of buying it off of a street vendor. The inability for these people to get their marijuana is not a legal issue; it is a health issue. Shutting down compassion clubs is, in truth, no different than shutting down the local pharmacy. Drug stores routinely sell drugs over the counter, such as aspirin, which have a far greater chance of causing ill effects, if misused, than cannabis. Governments may say they support medicinal marijuana in order to placate the people, but very little actions are taking place in order to get the sick and dying the medicine they desperately need.
Many states in the United States, however, will not even consider legalizing medical marijuana, let alone distributing it. The politicians realize that many pharmaceutical companies are major contributors to their campaigns, so they do not want another drug that can be obtained cheaply to replace costly and habit-forming pills. “‘Taking a hit of marijuana has been known to stop a full blown asthma attack.’(Personal communication with Dr. Donald Tashkin, December 12, 1989 and December 1, 1997)”( Herer). However, even with a plethora of medical advice such as this at governments’ hands, politicians are still afraid to act for fear that they will be perceived as soft on drugs in general. Many other conditions are potentially treatable with cannabis, but governments, for the most part, are unwilling to invest in the research necessary to prove this, keeping many doctors unable to prescribe something that might help victims of diseases such as HIV.
Marijuana is often considered a “gateway drug”. This happened due to a large rise in the number of teens addicted to heroin during the 1950’s. The government saw this as a new opportunity to tighten the marijuana laws, and started propaganda portraying marijuana as a gateway to all other drugs. However, the only reason marijuana users go on to harder drugs is because they are often forced to come in contact with people who distribute hard drugs such as cocaine or heroin in order to get a bag of marijuana. These dealers often push harder drugs onto people who would not be exposed to them if cannabis could be obtained over the counter. Criminalization of cannabis is a greater cause of drug addiction than cannabis itself.
The vast majority of marijuana smokers, however, are not the heroin addicts on the streets of downtown Victoria, or the prostitutes selling their bodies for a small amount of crack cocaine. Cannabis users have been placed in that category by many people, simply because cannabis is on the same level legally as heroin or cocaine. However, the vast difference is that marijuana causes no major ill affects towards society. There are no front-page stories in local papers saying that a man robbed a bank in order to buy a sack of weed, because it is not something that happens. Marijuana users are not obsessed with the drug; many lead normal lives, with the public unaware of the fact that they enjoy a joint after work.
Even today, however, laws are tightening everywhere. The United States has recently shut down many online stores selling pipes and other smoking accessories for designed for smoking tobacco due to the belief that nobody used these pipes for tobacco anyway. However, marijuana users can just roll a joint using a cigarette paper, or make a homemade pipe out of household items. If the government wishes to fully eradicate marijuana it will have to ban the sale of apples, screens for faucets, and pipes for plumbing. It is simply impossible to eliminate all drug paraphernalia.
The Bush administration is also alleging that drug money funds terrorism. This is merely another case of the government feeding off of the general public’s paranoia concerning the World Trade Center tragedy. The vast majority of marijuana does not fund terrorist activities, as it is mostly grown locally, especially in British Columbia, which is renowned globally for the high potency of its marijuana. There has been no proven link between marijuana and Al Quada or any other terrorist organization.
High schools violate basic human rights in order to attempt to keep marijuana off the school grounds. Many schools will bring in police equipped with drug sniffing dogs in order to search the student body. While the search is going on, very little actual education is occurring. In fact, many schools are expelling anyone found to be in possession of cannabis. These same schools will only give a two day suspension at most, and no quite often no penalty at all, to students repeatedly getting into fights and bullying others.
The worst thing about cannabis prohibition, however, is that it brands otherwise normally law-abiding citizens with the stigma of being a criminal. Although lawmakers insist that people do not serve hard time in prison for mere possession, which simply is not the case. A vast majority of people currently in prison for marijuana related offences are there for mere possession, often of small quantities. This costs a great deal of money to keep people who have never harmed society housed next to rapists, thieves, and other unwholesome characters. Almost as bad as that, however, is the difficulty in finding a job for a person who has been convicted of a marijuana-related charge. Very few companies will hire a convicted criminal, even if completely harmless, for fear of damaging the company’s reputation. Therefore, marijuana prohibition is clearly a cause of the rampant unemployment problem in contemporary Canadian society.
The prohibition of cannabis is indelibly intertwined with discrimination, propaganda, and occasionally outright bigotry. Denying sick and dying people the medicine they need, imprisoning harmless citizens, and denying a teen’s right to an education are not activities carried out by responsible governments. With changing attitudes becoming mainstream regarding other moral concerns, it becomes more and more clear that governments should not possess the right to define morality. In dictation of morals, western governments are practicing the exact same concept as the leaders of the Taliban were with their theocracy. Governments are simply being discriminating as soon as they interfere in someone’s own private life, and change needs to occur in order to make the world a fairer and more just place to live in.

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The government thinks we're all criminals. The people who are really the criminals are the people who view pot smokers as being no better than rapists, murderers, or corrupt politions
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jaman

You can thank the Bush administration for all the current anti pot advertisement .

I think the commercials they have recently air 'd on marijuana are completely ignorant and misconstrued. They in no way depict the true characteristics of a pot smoker.

NICE term paper !!

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freedom to grow , freedom to smoke .

Mr. President , please relieve us of our dependency on foreign oil !

Legalize hemp production !

no use4 a name

That paper is a prize winner my friend Great job.

If I ever need to write an informative or persuasive composition then I know howto turn to, so expect some reference suggestions before I get out of High School.

dsgbluntsmoker

nice paper
but...
tihs part
"However, the only reason marijuana users go on to harder drugs is because they are often forced to come in contact with people who distribute hard drugs such as cocaine or heroin in order to get a bag of marijuana."
is completely untrue. people who sell weed usually arent those media stereotyped "hard drug dealers" that you say you HAVE to buy a bag of weed from. and they certainly dont try to push harder drugs on you. the weed man usually just goes with the flow and its the customer who will request something else.
other than though that nice paper

Proline63

A+ and extra credit for being completely unbiased. If we had more people that could write like you in positions of power in our government, we might see changes happen a little quicker.

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Hey, you remember that time when... Oh. No, probably not- you were passed out.

Chiksic

Dang, dude. GREAT paper. I agree with you 100%. Maybe you should send that to a congressman or something too?

teufelfisch

Very well written!
Could use some more references to credit things up, though.

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no use4 a name

My dealer sells acid and ex as well so yes some do sell harder drugs as well because weed isn't a big seller compared to the other 2. Laced could lead to other drugs..

Chiksic

I just watched a thing on marijuana on the History channel. VERY very very cool. They went into how marijuana was made illegal for racist reasons. Mainly the south west states didn't like all the mexican immigrants, and they associated marijuana with mexicans. So they made it illegal so the mexicans would leave. Man, our govt is so screwed up.

jaman

hmm , that's some tripy info Chiksic