Brown 1 Garrison Brown J.

Beattie ENG-101 22 October 2010

Decriminalization of Marijuana If your house were built on a cracked foundation and you had the means to fix it, then logically you would. The laws surrounding marijuana in the USA are based upon a crack or fallacy of logic. I do not believe this is the fault of the mainstream society at the time due to their lack of scientific analysis of this plant. However, this does call for a reform in the current marijuana legislation. This new legislation should better reflect the new information we have regarding the drug. New legislation is needed to fix the cracked foundation that the current legislation resides upon. I believe recreational use of marijuana should be legalized for responsible adults because of its slandered history, medicinal value, and government regulation could better control the use of the drug. This cracked foundation can be seen with the history of marijuana in the United States. Harry J. Anslinger was one of the first major opponents of marijuana and is partially responsible for its illegalization in the late 1930's. The award winning documentary, Grass: The History of Marijuana, quotes Anslinger during his radio broadcast in 1937 saying, ...[The marijuana users] were slaves to the narcotic, continuing addiction until they deteriorate mentally, become insane, and turn to violent crime and murder (Mann) . Propaganda movies of the time inaccurately depict the effects of marijuana use on an individual. These inaccuracies and opinionated ideas can be seen in the film Reefer Madness. Phrases like, [the] soul destroying drug, or Marihuana...-a violent narcotic- an unspeakable scourge the real public enemy number one, all were used to scare the public into terror of the drug (Gasnier). The mayor of New York at the time, Fiorello La Guardia, spoke out against marijuana criminalization.

Brown 2 He felt that, ...the majority of American people do not want it enforced and are resisting its enforcement.... He then conducted a scientific investigation on the matter to see the true effects of marijuana. After six years of research, the La Guardia investigation disproved all of Anslinger's prior claims of marijuana. The damage of this propagandist material however, had already been embedded into the public's image of the drug (Mann). Propaganda is not a fair reason to judge a drug and should not be illegalized because of it. The La Guardia investigation of marijuana are interesting, but today we have far more detailed descriptions of the effects marijuana has on the human body. In fact, one of the reasons marijuana should be legalized is that there are a number of different ailments for which marijuana can help treat the symptoms. These illnesses include Cancer, and Glaucoma. Cancer patients are often treated with chemotherapy. Chemotherapy is highly toxic and causes nausea in its patients. Medicinal marijuana use with chemotherapy is very common since the nausea experienced is so severe, that some are unable to eat or even tolerate the smell of food (Zimmerman 30). Glaucoma causes pressure in the eyes which is due to excessive build up of fluids in the eye, marijuana helps to relieve this pressure (57). The Institute of Medicine has countered medicinal use of marijuana by stating, Smoked marijuana should generally not be recommended for...medical use. Dr. Kevin Sabet, who is a special advisor for policy for the Office of National Drug Control Policy, stated that, Smoked marijuana has never passed basic medical standards of safety and efficacy. Sabet states that Marinol which is, drived from the plant's most active ingredient, THC, already exists. He feels that the plant form of the marijuana is unneeded due to the presence of this drug (Sabet). Although THC is the main active ingredient in the plant, it is not the only compound which helps medically. It is actually a, complex interaction of several compounds (Zimmerman 21). Marijuana also does not need to be smoked, it can be digested the form of food, tinctures, or tea (189). What is the reason for spending money and time on a synthetic form when the plant is ready and available to be taken as the patients need it? Marijuana should be decriminalized

Brown 3 because it would be more readily available to people for not only life threatening conditions, but also for milder conditions such as migraines and insomnia. I believe marijuana should be an over the counter alternative to products such as, Advil which is for pain, and NyQuil which is for sleep. In the United States there are many drug regulations, most of which fail in their attempts to control drug use. The use of marijuana in the united states has hardly changed, ranging between fiftyfive percent and seventy percent. That is only a fifteen percent difference between the years 1975 and 1998 (MacCoun, and Reuter, 16). Governmental regulations obviously do not help much in slowing down the use of illicit drugs. Since illicit drug use has been above fifty percent for more than twenty years, one would think that legalizing marijuana would only increase that percentage. If we take a look at the Netherlands however, we realize that this just is not the case. When marijuana was legal the Netherlands had a fifteen percent use rate for ages thirteen to twenty-five. After marijuana use became legal, the percent of use dropped to two percent for the same age class. In Holland use of marijuana is only 13.6 percent for people twelve to eighteen years old, in contrast to the thirty-eight percent for the same age group in America (239). These examples demonstrate how the government was better able to control the drug when it did become legal. Leading to the most satisfactory solution; marijuana should be decriminalized. The decriminalization of marijuana would be hugely beneficial to our society as a whole. It would allow us to resurrect ourselves from the propaganda of the past, to explore better alternatives to medicines, and would allow better governmental control over the drug. This is now a matter of federal importance. If we legalize it we gain an asset to our society and if we do not then we are missing out on a great resource.