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Remolina Nicolas
Enc1101
Professor Massey
11/22/2014
Legalizing Marijuana
The legalization of Marijuana has been a controversial debate nationwide. Support from
all over the US has drastically increased, although the majority of Americans have yet to realize
this and are trying to look away from this process which is already effective in many states. The
legalization of this product does not bring forth issues such as those believed by the percentage
of population in its opposition. As a society, Americans have legal harmful substances that pose
a greater danger than cannabis. These include alcohol and tobacco derived products. These two
products are legal and way more dangerous than marijuana. Around 50,000 people die each year
from alcohol poisoning. And more than 400,000 death are cause by tobacco smoking. On the
other hand, marijuana is nontoxic and is practically impossible to overdose on.
The main problem that this process in facing is the ignorance of the people still thinking
that since marijuana is considered as a drug that it is automatically a harmful substance for all of
society. This is not true, marijuana is not a harmful substance, and actually this substance is one
that can be used for medical purposes for some illnesses or diseases. Since some of the people in
government and private companies are realizing that this could be a good business and actually
helpful for the community they are hiring lobbyists to go to congress and try to convince all the
people in congress to pass the bill so they could have a voting in their respective state. They are
many benefits if people legalize marijuana for both the people and businesses and most
importantly the state that it will be legalized in for several reasons that will be explained in the
next pages.

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The first section I want to touch down about this topic is the pioneer state of the
legalization of marijuana for both medicinal and recreational purposes. This first state was the
state of Colorado. The state of Colorado was the first state to legalize marijuana for recreational
purposes. In the election it won with a fifty five percent advantage over the rest. At first the
people that were against it harshly criticized this amendment and exclaimed that this will bring
many health problems for the whole community. They also said that this will bring great cost in
drug treatments, facilities, health care and traffic accidents. But on the other hand the people in
favor and the state said that the first $40,000,000 of tax revenue will go towards public school
constructing.
Colorado will be out of state debt in only a few years because of all the state tax revenue
coming in from marijuana. The economy for this state will prosper and they will have money to
spend on areas they need support in. Imagine how the U.S. will be if all states legalized
marijuana for recreational use. They will be out of debt in only a few years. A couple of states
followed Colorados steps in legalizing marijuana or at least trying to do this. This group
includes Washington, Alaska, Washington D.C, Arizona, California, Nevada, Oregon and
Florida. Most of states are trying to pass the bill to get a chance to vote on it or already have the
bill passed or in Floridas case didnt pass because of the 60% rule in the election which made no
sense if 56% of the state accepted this bill.
Another situation is that marijuana is one way or another coming up as the next big thing
in the business after alcohol and cigarettes. Calculations made have the U.S market ranging from
$70 billion to $100 billion. Comparing these two numbers to the cigarette industry which makes
about $91 billion yearly and the beer industry which makes about $97 billion yearly we could
make an estimated prediction that the cannabis industry might just be the next big thing.

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If marijuana is legalized in the state of Florida many things will change and all of this
will affect society in various forms. First of all what will all the people that are in jail for
marijuana related crimes act when they see that marijuana is legal in their state? This is one issue
state governments will have to look into to see what options they have. Also the people have to
realize that if marijuana is legalized they cant go high everywhere or stuff like that. There will
still be all sorts of rules just like for alcohol and driving under the influence is still applied. But
this will first bring negative criticism towards it just like in Colorado but as time passes and
people see the results of this selling of cannabis they will realize that it wasnt a bad idea at all
and the state revenue from the tax will probably benefit them as well.
But if we put this into the worst possible situation that this will most likely not happen in
which the people regret the idea of legalizing the cannabis then two things will end up happening
which are that the industry will have not much customers and will eventually go bankrupt and
close for a few years or the government realizes what is happening and gives it a boost or just
prohibits it just like they did with the alcohol for a few years.
Just in Florida there are approximately around 1 million people that have used or use
marijuana as a recreational activity. These numbers are from a 2003 survey conducted by a
private agency but using logic and statistics you can inference that those numbers have gone up
in past years. If these numbers keep going up the revenues will also go up if they legalize
marijuana. As you know this years ballot failed to pass but people are already working to get the
congress to allow another election for November of 2016. There the people will realize that other
states are making money and will now approve the legalization of marijuana.

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The image above is from an organized campaign in favor of the legalization of marijuana
in Florida. The young lady is holding up a poster which holds a message which says legal
marijuana means more jobs!!! This is a very true statement because if we legalize the cannabis it
will create a whole new industry of jobs ranging from the agriculture, to the distributors, to the
retail, to the main offices and finally ending up in the CEO position. This industry will create
hundreds or even thousands of jobs.

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The American society has to realize the amount of benefits that the legalization of
marijuana will provide toward their respective country, state, or city. Americans nowadays
spend roughly about 35 billion dollars a year on illegal cannabis. Americans also spent about 1
million dollars of public money in keeping produces and dealers behind bars. If Americans
legalize cannabis the revenue would be estimated to reach 20 billion dollars a year which is
around only 1 percent of yearly state government revenue. With the numbers and statistics
presented above most people would assume that this would be a great product to legalize for both
government and the civilians.
But unfortunately this is not the case that is happening in most states. The country of
Canada has been studying the case in Colorado and seeing the results of this products they
started to run a set studies in regards of the amount of people using this substance. The results
were pretty amazing in regards of the numbers. The amount of cannabis used in Canada if taxed
would produce a revenue of about $2 billion for the government. And if they keep using this
scheme for a few years the country will cut their deficits by $1.3 billion. Another advantage
would be that with the tax revenues this money could be used to pay yearly health insurances for
approximately 356,252 Canadians.
Americans Have to stop thinking like they did back in the old days and have to
modernize and realize all the good things that many products will bring to them. Cannabis will
revolutionize the country and the whole system that ran on cannabis. All the mafias and drug
dealers will end up going out of business. Crime rates will go down also as proven by the states
of Colorado and Washington. This will also reduce the mafias that worked on growing and
selling this product and will help the community by producing employments in some areas of
that industry.

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In my opinion all that has been done up till now in regards of the process of this product
has been a good start to what I think will end up being a successful product not only here in the
united states but in many other countries in the world. All in all I hope that Americans finally
realize that this substance will bring forth great benefits for the community as for the government
also. This will get the great American nation out of debt and in the future we will prosper and
look back into the past and say what a great idea it was to legalize this amazing product.

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Reference page

Blake, David, and Jack Finlaw. "Marijuana Legalization in Colorado: Learned

Lessons." Vol. 8.Issue 2 (2012): P359-380. EBSCO. Web. 5 Nov. 2014.

Kleiman, Mark. "How Not to Make a Hash Out of Cannabis Legalization."

Washington Monthly 19 Mar. 2014. Washington Monthly. Web. 5 Nov. 2014.

Ducatti Flister, Larissa. "The Economic Case for Marijuana Legalization in

Canada." Journal of Alternative Perspectives in the Social Sciences Vol. 5.Issue 1
(2012): P96-100. Print.
Bernasek, Anna. "TWO NUMBERS. WHY THE IRS WILL LOVE LEGAL
POT." Newsweek Global 10 Jan. 2014, 10th ed., sec. 1: P98-100. Print.