Should Marijuana Be Legalized - 1133 Words

The word marijuana has been drug through the dirt in recent years. The â€Å"War on Drugs† campaign has falsely made marijuana a villain. Sixty years ago marijuana had many different uses, and today marijuana has many more pros than it does cons. Marijuana should be legalized because positive results of criminalization of it are nonexistent, the medical effects are legitimate, and marijuana is less harmful than alcohol or tobacco. The benefits of criminalization of marijuana are nonexistent. Marijuana arrests are actually the majority of all drug arrests: â€Å"in 2011 pot possession represented 54 percent of every drug crime that police managed to uncover† (MacQueen). The U.S. alone has 45 million documented drug arrests since 1971. More than half†¦show more content†¦Argentina and Mexico have already taken steps to ease their drug laws. The Argentine Supreme Court ruled that it was unconstitutional to punish people for using marijuana for personal consumption , and the government of Mexico made it legal to possess up to five grams of marijuana. Many people think that criminalization actually helps drug cartels: â€Å"reformers have long argued criminalization enriched drug cartels, fueled savage turf wars, corrupted state institutions, and filled prisons with people who present no real threat to society† (Carroll, Tuckman, and Phillips). Criminalization also allows drug cartels to turn harmless users into savage members of their cartels in prison. Violence due to drugs would go down with less members in drug cartels. Legalizing marijuana would resolve this issue, but this is not the only reason to legalize marijuana. The benefits of legalizing marijuana are countless. First, marijuana has legitimate medical effects. Many patients with either serious or terminal illnesses use marijuana for many different reasons. They are either in extreme pain and need something to ease it, or they can’t keep food down and need something to help them. Marijuana is that something for a good number of patients. In one patient’s case, she was addicted to pain pills. The pain from her illness was so intense that she took pill after pill, but nothing could ease her pain. She went to the doctor and got a prescription for