Marijuana Should be Legalized :: Argumentative Persuasive Essays

I believe that marijuana should be legalized. I believe that if the goverment did so the National debt would be greatly decreased by the money it would make from the taxation of marijuana and also from the decrease in law enforcement and jail cost that is caused by the "criminal" aspects of marijuana. I believe that the use of marijuana would be more likely to go down than up with the legalization of it. I believe this because half the reason some people use it is the appeal of doing something illegal. I think that marijuana is no more harmful that alcohol or nicotine and these are perfectly legal "drugs" in todays society.You have never heard of someone overdosing on Pot but you do hear of people get deathly ill from alcohol poisoning. Peolpe all over the country whine and complain about the use of Pot but at the same time hold George Washington, Ben Franklin, and the rest of our founding fathers in such high regard. Do these people not realize that these men both grew and used this "drug" they hold in such disgust. Today you see commercials on the TV about how bad marijuana is and how it impairs your judgement and can cause car accidents. A reseacher at the University of Toronto by the name of Alison Smiley in March of 1999 showed that people who use marijuana in moderate dose are more cautious drivers than those who have have a moderate amount of alcohol. She found that the marijuana users are more aware of their impairment therefore they drive slower than those under the influnce of alcohol. Even the National Institute on Drug Abuse, Bureau of Mortality Statistics studies show that more people have died do to the use of aspirin (500) than those of marijuana (0). As for the cost of what it takes to deal with the "criminals" in refernce to marijuana it would baffle most people if they knew the facts. The facts are this, in California only in 1998 marijuana accounted for 14,344 felony and 46,600 misdemeanor arrests for a total cost of some $100 million to the state. Over the past 20 years there has been a 2000% increase in prisioners due to marijuana while some serious criminals or paroled due to overcrowding. It has also been shown that CAMP (Campaign Against Marijuana Planting) has destroyed a 1/4 of a million marijuana plants in 1999 alone.