Marijuana.com

Kaya Mon

Ok so I think I'm going to do my college argumentative essay on legalizing marijuana. Now I know there are lots of sources just around here to use, but if anybody has any others it would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

 

420godfather

...drug library. org and marijuanalibrary are two very good resources.

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......420gf......

Kaya Mon

OK thanks I will definitely use those. As a toker this topic really interests me and I'm going to put a lot of effort into this paper unlike my usual essays I just kind of throw together..

420godfather

...that's great. Let us know how it turns out !

Kaya Mon

Yea I will probably post it on here before I hand in the final draft. So, I'll keep everyone updated on how it's going.

 

Pompo

There's StoptheDrugWar.org and LEAP : Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. Hope they help

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__________________________________________________ ________________________Arcade

Buzzby

Probably the best source material ever written is Jack Herer's The Emperor Wears No Clothes. It can be read in its entirety online.

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Kaya Mon

This is the rough draft my paper isn't due for a while, but I got going and wrote it all..My mom and several friends read it and all have said they thought it was pretty good...heres all 5 pages in its glory..haha

An Unheard Cause

By:Brad Loepfe


"Marijuana in its natural form is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man." DEA's Administrative Law Judge, Francis Young. If the DEA’s Administrative Law Judge can come to the realization that marijuana is a safe substance that should be legalized, the rest of the United States should too. Although marijuana is thought to cause cancer, be addictive, and lead its users to use other “harder” drugs all of those are not necessarily true. In fact marijuana has been proven to have many medical purposes that many people would love to take advantage of if it was ever legalized. There are also many other positives that could come from legalizing marijuana. By legalizing marijuana the government would save billions a dollars a year in law enforcement costs, it would simplify the production of hemp, reduce the flow of money from the black market and help the U.S economy, there probably wouldn’t be much of an increase in users, and prohibition is based on lies and hasn’t been deterring marijuana use. The truth needs to come out. All of those negative connotations linked with smoking marijuana have been proven otherwise, but because of these connotations the news proving them wrong is ignored or doesn’t reach a mass media therefore doing nothing.

To understand why marijuana should be legalized one first has to know the history of how it came to be illegal. During the early 1930s most of the minorities were looked down upon and thought to be unequal to the white race. Many of these people smoked a substance new to the U.S. called marijuana which in turn was looked down upon. This plant gave you a feeling of euphoria when it was smoked and only the poor smoked it, so it must be bad. Thus, the propaganda play “Reefer Madness” was created to sway middle class youth away from using the substance. Soon enough there was in fact evidence proving that marijuana had bad side effects. This little bit of evidence the government had collected was enough for them to crack down on marijuana usage making it completely illegal by 1971. Therefore research on marijuana has become increasingly hard to do, but still enough has been completed to make a case for its legalization. The DEA claims that “drug legalizers use “medical marijuana” as red herring in effort to advocate broader legalization of drug use. That is completely true too, and the reason why “we” do that is because we know the “war on drugs” is lost. We know it has failed to control marijuana use and we don’t want to continue to support it, so we do the only thing we can. We push for the most persuasive and best reasons for legalization. It just so happens that marijuana’s medical uses one of the best reasons for its legalization.

So, let us first look at what the DEA has to say about marijuana. The DEA claims that smoking marijuana may cause lung cancer, but according to the results of a John Hopkins study there may be some disagreement. “These results… seem to provide strong evidence of the absence of a long-term residual effect of cannabis use on cognition” they concluded. Also according to the results of a recent study done by Donald Tashkin and hid study group from the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, marijuana is believed to have no relation to the three cancers they tested for in their largest case control study ever done. He claimed “What we found instead was no association (with cancer) at all, and even suggestion of some protective effect.” The DEA also claims that marijuana is a gateway drug, but again they’re mistaken and there is one simple reason explained perfectly by the Institute of Medicine’s 1999 report on marijuana. It explained that marijuana has been mistaken as a gateway drug in the past (such as by the government) because, “Patterns in progression of drug use from adolescence to adulthood are strikingly regular. Because it is the most widely used illicit drug, marijuana is predictably the first drug people encounter. Not surprisingly, most users of other illicit drugs have used marijuana first. In fact, most drug users begin with alcohol and nicotine before marijuana, usually before the legal age.” Another of the DEA’s claims against marijuana is an addictive drug.

Of all the positive things that would come from the legalization of marijuana, the greatest is how easily accessible it would be to the sick people that use marijuana for its medical purposes. As mentioned before marijuana might actually prevent cancer, it is also used by many people suffering from AIDs wasting syndrome, such as assistant district attorney in San Francisco, Keith vines, who lost 60 pounds because of this syndrome. He has been able to by smoking marijuana regain his appetite and gain the weight back. This was all after he tried the FDA-approved, DEA suggested alternative THC containing drug marinol which failed to work for him because of its uncontrollable dosing. Chemotherapy patients also use marijuana to lessen nausea and vomiting because they have a hard time keeping other medications in their bodies long enough for them to take effect. Glaucoma patients have been able to benefit from marijuana as well. Although the DEA denies its effects, according to eight different studies marijuana or THC can reduce eyeball pressure in Glaucoma patients who could otherwise go blind from the pressure if it’s not reduced. There are also other illnesses that haven’t been successfully treated by conventional medicines where marijuana is used as an alternative type of treatment.

Now that the main reasons why marijuana should be illegal, why those reasons are actually false, and the benefits of legalizing marijuana have been discussed. It is time to focus on the probably the most important part of legalizing marijuana and that is effects of legalization on the United States. Some might believe that if it was legalized that there would be increase in the use. Yes, there would probably be a slight increase in use like what happened after alcohol was legalized after prohibition. Evidence for can be seen if you look at the 11 states that briefly decriminalized marijuana in the 1970s, the number of users stayed about the same. There would also be an increase because people wouldn’t be afraid to use it for its medical properties. There wouldn’t be in an increase in use because of the increased availability however. If anything the unnecessary need for dealers would stop some teens from ever getting involved with marijuana for money like some do. According to the authors of Money for Crime “The average “dealer” holds a low-wage job and sells part time to obtain drugs for his or her own use,” so it would seem feasible that usage of marijuana would decrease. The Police Foundation of the UK stated “Our conclusion is that the present law on cannabis produces more harm than it prevents…It criminalizes large numbers of otherwise law-abiding, mainly young, people to the detriment of their futures.” They also seem to believe that teens would gain from marijuana’s legalization. The Netherlands government actually created legal tolerance of marijuana in small amounts and is now successfully preventing kids from experimenting with hard drugs. So, again just another example of how legalizing marijuana would be a positive thing. Marijuana’s legalization would also simplify the development of Hemp into the United States economy. It could be used as a valuable and diverse crop, a new bio-fuel, and any other use it may have, but because of the opposition to legalizing marijuana hemp still isn’t used in the U.S. The Office of National Drug Policy Control reports that as of 2002 marijuana arrests accounted for 45% of all drug arrests and about 16.4 billion dollars in law enforcement costs. According to the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University states only use about 433 million dollars to regulate sales of alcohol and tobacco and to collect alcohol and tobacco tax. If marijuana was legalized the government would have roughly 16 billion dollars to spend as well as some unknown amount of time not spent arresting people on marijuana charges on something else, like stopping harder drug use or anything, the possibilities are endless with such a large sum of money and extra time. A regulated legal marijuana market would contribute more money to the 16 billion and to the economy with its legal sales and taxation. This in turn would stop an immense flow of money into the black market which would further help the United States.

After many countless examples of marijuana legalizations positive, negative, and future effects it should hopefully agreed that marijuana should be legalized. Because, as you have read marijuana is only illegal because of government propaganda and commitment to its illegality, there are various reasons for legalization, but the government is just too stubborn to change the laws and admit the administration has made a mistake. So, if you could please do what you can to fight for our right, the right to smoke an all natural plant, marijuana.

SpiralArchitect

I second Jack Herer's The Emperor Wears No Clothes. I wrote my English 211 argumentative paper on the legalization of industrial hemp and how it can save the world. My argument was that although medical & recreational marijuana is illegal, criminalizing industrial hemp is like throwing out 'the baby with the bath water'. I also read A History : Cannabis by Martin Booth in its entirety. Great book BTW.

The minimum was 10 pages long, but I went for like 12, correct bibliography and full MLA citations, and a solid 98% for my grade. I still read it time to time. Good luck, let us know how it turns out.

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feel the rhythm,
to feel connected enough to step aside and weep like a widow
to feel inspired, to fathom the power, to witness the beauty, to bathe in the fountain,
to swing on the spiral of our divinity and still be a human.

Kaya Mon

Yea I will thanks...