Most people I've heard speak about the legalization of marijuana had just taken a puff off of a bong. I quit smoking pot when I was in my very early 20s. I do believe that it is in society's best interest to legalize it for many reasons.
According to the FBI, in 2006, over 700,000 arrests were made for marijuana possession. These don't include sales, manufacturing, or intent to sell charges, only amounts small enough to be considered personal use. Marijuana is generally a poor person's drug, or at least that is who is more often than not being arrested for it. Figure in race, and white upper middle class people, statistically, won't get busted.
Not all of the offenders will remain in jail or get prison sentences, but a lot will. Most will get harder sentences than violent offenders. About 6 out of 10 of the marijuana offenders have no record of violence. Not to mention, according to U.S. Department of Justice's Bureau of Justice Statistics, "pot prisoners" are taking up $1 BILLION of taxpayers money being locked away in over crowded jails and prisons across the country.
Marijuana is not physically addictive, and is actually less damaging or dangerous than alcohol or tobacco. Some people get adverse effects, but not everyone, much like any drug on the market. If pot was legal, the government could tax it. With the number of people who do smoke it, that alone could probably pay for universal health care.
The production of hemp is also illegal. Hemp is cheaper to manufacture, easier to grow, and just as good, if not better than cotton. The cotton industry was a big lobbyist when marijuana was made illegal. I don't think it was coincidence.
What is keeping marijuana from being legal? Is it the denial that the "War on Drugs" is a complete failure?
I like how you distance yourself from being called a Druggy Propagandist in the first paragraph...very objective. Good statistics.
Personally I believe there are bigger issues at hand, but it's always interesting to digress to legalization of plantae.
Sustainably yers, http://www.progressiveu.org/blog/green-underbelly
I did smoke pot once upon a time. I also thought it should be legal then, but didn't have more of a reason than "so I can't get arrested for it." Those days are long gone, and seeing the statistics and knowing all of the related problems with locking up pot smokers, I think it's a valid argument.
I know there are much bigger issues at hand, but we have to start somewhere. I didn't even mention medical marijuana.
-Sonja :)
"Democracy works only when you vote. When you don't take the time to vote for the candidate you find the least offensive, you run the risk of electing the candidate you find the most offensive."
Werd. Medical Swedish Jeeba is a whole different bag.
Sustainably yers, http://www.progressiveu.org/blog/green-underbelly
"Personally I believe there are bigger issues at hand, but it's always interesting to digress to legalization of plantae."
There will always be bigger issues at hand and big as they may be, they will inevitably be exploited to distract attention and concern away from 'smaller' issues, like personal freedom for example. Such a thing seems like a small issue to us in the West, because we have forgotten what it is like to have our freedom completely stripped from us.
We look at horribly oppressive regimes in other countries and in the past and forget that presently there are groups all over the US who want to implement very similar regimes in America. Look at how many people will slavishly surrender their freedom in the face of a terror alert.
Waiting until we find that those smaller issues we shelved as relatively insignificant have, one day, mounted up to leave us living in an aggressively authoritarian state because everybody was too preoccupied watching the war and soaking up 'the terror', to defend and fight for their right to live freer, in the face of 'bigger issues'.
The US is the only country on this Earth that I've been to, and I've been to a lot, where I was finger-printed and practically interrogated like a criminal before I was allowed to set foot onto a plane to fly there. But, hey, nobody's really got a problem because of all the terror, I mean, being finger-printed and having data mined about you is a small issue compared to 9/11, no?
The fact is that issues like legalization are indicative of cogs in an unreasonable system, one which, if left to some of it's current mechanics, will produce far more disastrous results than even the bigger issues today. Most of the big issues today are the result of ignoring 'smaller' ones in the past.
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I am the people my mother warned me about.
http://www.progressiveu.org/blog/tuffgong
TUFFGONG
Senior Executive Administrator™