Marijuana Legalization Essay Research Paper 1Marijuana Legalization

Marijuana Legalization Essay, Research Paper

1Marijuana Legalization Marijuana legalization has been a widely discussed topic for a number of years. America has a long history with marijuana, over the past 250 years marijuana has been a part of our society (Martin Online Web). After assessing the truth about marijuana, one may begin to think about legalizing it. Marijuana is used for medicinal purposes, clothing, rope, and socially. The actual harm marijuana causes to individuals is slim and the positive attributes of legalizing it far outweigh the negatives. Marijuana is more of an American tradition than most people know. It was grown ever since 1629 in America for the purposes of rope, clothing, food, and smoking. It was legal to smoke marijuana in the United States until 1937 when forty-six of the forty-eight states plus the District of Columbia had prohibited the use of marijuana (Martin Online Web). Now, in 1998, marijuana is illegal in all fifty states. The penalties on marijuana offenses were steep up until 1972. In seventy-two, a panel of experts were appointed by President Richard Nixon and led by former Pennsylvania governor Raymond Shafer. The panel concluded that marijuana prohibition caused greater harm to the user than to the use of marijuana itself. The National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse 2recommended that state and federal laws be changed to remove criminal penalties of marijuana for personal use and for the casual distribution of small amounts of marijuana. That year, law enforcement arrested close to 300,000 Americans on marijuana charges (NORML Online Web). These arrests are mostly composed of average people that use marijuana personally. These people harm no one, and their sentence in jail is not justified because their violation does not affect society in a negative way. Again, in 1982 the National Academy of Science (NAS) composed a report on marijuana reaffirming that criminal justice approaches were both inappropriate and harmful. It recommended not only that marijuana possession be decriminalized, but that lawmakers give serious consideration to creating a system of regulated distribution and sale. That year, more that 450,000 Americans were arrested for violating marijuana laws (NORML Online Web). Let s keep in mind that these marijuana charges aren t just a night in jail and a fine. These charges can ruin a person s life when that person hadn t done anything significantly wrong. For example, individuals arrested for simple marijuana possession in Arizona may face eighteen months in jail and a $150,000 fine (NORML Online Web). Many states also have 3laws automatically suspending the drivers license of an individual if they are convicted of any marijuana offense, even if the offense was had nothing to do with driving (NORML Online Web). Marijuana is on the rise medically in the U.S. It has been legalized in five states already for medicinal use and there are more to come. Marijuana has a very long history of medical use, since it s one of the oldest living plants (LaFave Online Web). The first recorded use of marijuana as medicine was in China. It was reported in Pen Tsboo Ching in first or second century AD. It reported that ma-fe-san (boiled hemp compound) was used as an anesthetic for surgical patients. Ma fen (the fruit of hemp) had many uses such as clearing blood, cooling temperature, relieving fluxes, undoing rheumatism, and discharging pus for patients (LaFave Online Web). This is where the medicinal use of marijuana was derived from. Obviously new technologies take care of the way they used marijuana back then, but this still shows marijuana s history of being used in a positive way. One way marijuana is used medically today is by treating cancer patients involved in chemotherapy. THC taken in the form of a pill or a joint reduces some of the side effects of chemotherapy. It reduces 4nausea and vomiting in the patients (LaFave Online Web). Marijuana has great potential in the field of medicine; there are many other ways to use it as well as the cancer patients. Now that the medical use of marijuana has been legalized in a few states, there will be more studies showing its use can help even more. These studies have not taken place before because marijuana was previously totally illegal. Marijuana is also a very versatile plant for making several different products. The hemp plant can be used for making fiber, rope, twine, canvas, cloth, cotton, and paper. In fact, it was this versatility that caused marijuana to become illegal in the first place (Pluff Online Web). This is a surprising fact, since most people think it was made illegal because it can be abused as a drug. Before 1883 about seventy-five to ninety percent of the world s paper was made from hemp fiber. This was a good and cheap way to manufacture paper. In the United States during the 1930 s mass production of hemp paper had to wait until someone invented a machine to separate the hemp pulp from the fiber cheaply. During this period, Dupont Chemicals, Hearst Paper and Timber, and several other companies had developed a new way to make white paper out of 5trees. When Dupont and the others finally submitted all of their patents, someone invented the hemp-decorticating machine. This threatened to put all tree paper companies out of business since hemp paper was cheaper to make. Most of the tree paper companies were very powerful and had inside connections with the government, and