The awareness is growing within the minute but the legalizations still move slowly, with only four states and the District of Columbia legalizing marijuana in the United States.
Marijuana is a very prominent and controversial issue in society today. Although many slanderous claims have been made about cannabis in recent history, the truths are slowly starting to resurface.
As a former marijuana consumer and current administrator for a marijuana activism website, I strongly believe that marijuana should be legalized for all uses.
Using marijuana for medicinal purposes is not a recent discovery. In fact, written references to use medical marijuana date back nearly 5, years. These disorders include pain relief, nausea, glaucoma, and movement disorders.
Today, thousands of patients are able to use marijuana as an effective method of treatment for their ailments. However, these patients are at the mercy of the federal government and its authority.
One of the biggest positive impacts that the legalization of marijuana would produce is the reintegration of hemp into our society, and more importantly in current times, our economy.
From an industrial standpoint, hemp provides many advantages over a great deal of current resources that America utilizes. The most common use for hemp is in the production of textile based products.
Hemp fibers are considerably strong so that makes it ideal for the production of many products like paper, fabric, and rope. Hemp produces a higher yield per acre than cotton and has a growing cycle of only days instead of Hemp seeds provide more protein than soy, and according to the U.
Department of Agriculture, you can produce four times as much paper from an acre of marijuana than an acre of trees; plus, marijuana can be harvested at a quicker rate than trees http: But perhaps the most important attribute of hemp is its ability to produce a substantial amount of cellulose.
Cellulose is a compound that, in more recent years, has been converted into a biofuel called cellulostic ethanol. Hemp holds an advantage though, because it can be produced more frequently than cotton, and it yields four times the amount of cellulose you can get from a corn stalk http: Currently, the United States has to import all of its hemp from countries like Canada and China, who have no laws banning the cash crop.
In these times of uncertainty, we need jobs and we need more domestic industry, and hemp can accomplish both of those.
Because of the recent focus on marijuana legalization, many people are looking back to why cannabis was criminalized in the first place. Contrary to popular belief, the reason marijuana was made illegal had nothing to do with health issues. The real reason was simple, good old fashioned, American business.
As the methods for processing hemp into paper and plastics were becoming more readily available and affordable, business leaders including William Randolph Hearst and DuPont stood to lose fortunes. They were faced with either spending massive amounts of money adapting their prominent, timber-based, industries to produce hemp, or be run out of business by the conveniences and low prices that came with these hemp producing innovations.
Instead of doing either of these, they both did everything they could to make their competition illegal. People supported making the drug illegal because if the Latin-American people were caught consuming it, they would be deported back to their country of origin.
Robert Heath of Tulane University conducted a test in which lab monkeys were given thirty marijuana joints daily to test for harmful side effects. After 90 days, many of the monkeys started to die and the university reported that the monkeys had died from a mass dying of brain cells and they concluded that the consumption of marijuana destroyed the brain.
Upon further investigation of the study, it was revealed that Dr. Heath actually pumped the equivalent of sixty-three joints via gasmasks into the monkeys everyday in just a five minute time frame; much more than the first reported thirty joints a day.
Inalcohol contributed to 85, deaths in the United States.
In alone, tobacco contributed to a staggeringdeaths! In the entire history of mankind, marijuana has never been recorded as a cause of death. No one in recorded history has died from the consumption of cannabis http: However, marijuana has been linked to short term memory damage and to a slightly reduced lung capacity when regularly inhaled.
Although no where near as severely as alcohol, marijuana does also impair judgment and motor skills. As is the same with most other things, those who regularly ingest cannabis usually build up a tolerance to these side effects which makes them even less hindering, but some individuals never fully develop one.
Marijuana is also not as addictive as most media outlets would lead you to believe. The most addictive drug, even above heroin, is nicotine. After nicotine and heroine comes cocaine, and then alcohol. Below that is caffeine, and at the very bottom of the chart is marijuana; less addictive than your can of Dr.Jun 02, · Against Legalizing Marijuana.
April 6, No they are not. Marijuana should stay illegal in the United States because if it is legalized, more people will smoke it, causing negative. Argumentative Essay: Why Should Marijuana Be Legalized?
March 21, Julie Petersen The number of people pointing out to the numerous reasons why marijuana should be legal is growing daily. Persuasive Essay - Why Not to Legalize Marijuana. Topics: Law Legalize it I Abstract There are many reasons why marijuana should be legalized.
Throughout this paper, evidence will be given to show how the positive outcomes of legalizing cannabis outweighs the negative. Marijuana should be legalized.
Prohibition was once tried with alcohol and it was a proven failure, and it should be soon proven again with marijuana.
Marijuana is a relatively safe drug, especially when compared to other illegal drugs and even some legal drugs, such as alcohol and tobacco. Argumentative Essay Legalizing/or not legalizing use of marijuana in the US November 30, Legalizing/or not legalizing use of marijuana in the US The problems and violence caused by the use of illicit drugs, and the lack of efficient measures by the government to reduce the use of these substances has affected both society and businesses.
Dec 13, · Argumentative Essay On Marijuana Legalization. Marijuana if legalized, would become a product for anyone to purchase to the guidelines that the government or state sets and regulates.
Legalizing marijuana is also believed to reduce the crime rate in America and free up resources.