Legalize It - Michael Paff

Marijuana has been criminalized in the United States since 1937, when the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937 was passed as federal law. Since then, this has adversely effected civilians internationally, users of the drug, the US government and officials, and drug cartels from many countries. Keeping marijuana (currently a Schedule 1 drug in the United States) illegal creates many problems for the United States. The solution is to legalize marijuana in the United States for medical and recreational purposes, with regulations on its use, as part of a new Federal law by 2015.

Opposers of cannabis legalization include the Drug Enforcement Administration, a federal agency, and their message is heard across America via programs to spread anti-legalization sentiments. The 1998 Office of National Drug Control Policy budget summary outlines a set of goals that introduce these ideas, one of which is to

"Educate and enable America's youth to reject illegal drugs as well as the use of alcohol and tobacco" (ONDCP, IV.iii).

Though they aim to largely target American youth, most Americans have heard the anti drug sentiment from their government as it has been being spread for decades. The messages they are likely to hear include that Marijuana increases crime. The DEA released a pamphlet, Speaking Out Against Drug Legalization that states: "Six times as many homicides are committed by people under the influence of drugs" (DEA, 7), thus tying a connection between marijuana use and violence. This vague statement is further supplemented by the claim that: "The increasing use of marijuana is responsible for more than increased crime" (DEA, 9). However, as stated by Douglas McVay in "Marijuana Legalization: The Time is Now," the seventh chapter of The Drug Legalization Debate, "the Drug Use Forecasting (DUF) program of the Department of Justice, reveals that anywhere from 53% to 90% of male arrestees test positive for illicit drugs. This statistic is of dubious value, however, since no data is available on the disposition of the cases included in the DUF program. It is thus impossible to know the number of persons testing positive who are actually guilty of any crimes...the DUF's results are skewed by the inclusion of a number of small-scale drug arrests, including possession offenses" (McVay, 1). It becomes apparent that the government lumps all drugs, and all crimes, into statistics in order to make statements with very little detail to get people to think people under the influence of marijuana will cause crime. This truly is of "dubious value," as if marijuana use is considered a crime, it is obvious that the use of marijuana would perpetuate crime.

The DEA also will claim that legalization of marijuana will give rise to a significantly higher amount of users. On the Dutch liberalization of marijuana, the DEA argues: "For the age group 18-20, the increase is from 15 percent in 1984 to 44 percent in 1996" (DEA, 6). The government gives many statistics that show use of marijuana increases when it is decriminalized, as Alaska did in 1975. However, these numbers are also of little value: "After marijuana legalization there will be an increase in the number of people willing to admit that they are marijuana users, because a significant number of users will no longer fear admitting their use. NORML estimates that there are currently some 30 to 50 million regular marijuana users in the United States, many more than the government's reported 11.8 million. Thus, an initial explosion in the number of users is likely, is no cause for alarm, and is easily understood" (McVay, 3). This phenomenon indeed would explain the rising number of supposedly new users that arise in places where marijuana has been decriminalized. Also, when looking at the numbers of American marijuana smokers, which is certainly above the governments estimated 11.8 million (due to the fear of admitting use) and probably closer to NORML's estimate, the prohibition of marijuana is just plain silly. The fact is obvious that marijuana prohibition is ineffective in carrying out what the government wants from it: to dramatically decrease the use of marijuana in the US. "The fact that 33% of the U.S. population 12 years of age or older, 65,748,000 people, admit to using marijuana at some time in their lives (NIDA, 1988), indicates that the policy has failed at its primary goal of stopping use" (McVay, 2). Combine this with the fact that: "Combined federal, state, and local expenditures were estimated at more than $10 billion in 1987" (McVay, 2), and the United States has for itself a very expensive failure.

The solution to these problems is to legalize marijuana in the United States at the federal level. The way to legalize marijuana in the US is simple. Money must be raised to lobby for the new law and gain public support. There must be regulations set up around the law to prohibit the use of marijuana by minors, while driving, or by people at risk for mental problems. The Gale Encyclopedia of US History's entry on States' Rights states that "States' Rights advocates believe that considerable governmental authority should be located in the separate and collective states of the United States" ("States' Rights"). This follows many Americans' beliefs that this is how the government would be run best. However, the current rift between the federal government's classification of marijuana as a Schedule 1 drug with "no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States" (CFR, 21 pt. 13), and the legalization of medical marijuana in 16 US states is appalling. It shows we have a contradictory, hypocritical system with no hope of enforcing its own rule's in a clear way. As pointed out on the website, saveoursociety.org, a proponent of anti drug sentiment, this is a big problem: "The legalization of marijuana creates a rift between state and federal legislation which leads to enforcement issues." Also, marijuana's being illegal anywhere in the US ensures: "the user is forced to choose between either committing a major felony by cultivating plants for personal use, or purchasing marijuana from a criminal drug dealer, which perpetuates the black market and exposes the marijuana user to other drugs being peddled by the same dealer" (McVay, 2). Surely only a federal legalization would best ensure the safety of marijuana users across the board.

Another objection brought up against this solution regards drug cartels. The DEA argues that "Legalization would not put the cartels out of business; cartels would simply look to other illegal endeavors" (DEA, 7). But legalizing marijuana would make a big push to put the cartels out of business. In Mexico, where according to the Drug Enforcement Administration U.S. Department of Justice Congressional Budget Submission "Most of the non-domestic marijuana available in the U.S. is grown" (DEA, 13), there exist many violent drug cartels. The DEA claims that "Since the demand for marijuana far exceeds that for any other illegal drug and the profit potential is so high, some cocaine and heroin drug trafficking organizations traffic marijuana to help finance their other drug operations" (DEA, 24). The need to wipe out these cartels becomes apparent in the article "A New Way to Fight Mexico's Vicious Cartels: Legalizing Marijuana" by Ioan Grillo from Time.com, the website of the popular news magazine notes that "The profits of the green help them finance paramilitary death squads that have claimed 40,000 victims since 2006" (Grillo, 1). Having the drug cartels turn to more violence to make up for the loss of marijuana would be terrible, but the smuggling of marijuana is a violent business already. Grillo's article also suggests: "Some of the violence can be directly linked to the marijuana trade. After the Tijuana bust in October, gunmen murdered 13 recovering addicts at a rehab center — one for each 10 tons of weed seized — apparently to try to make the government back off. Mexican cartels commit murder over the business precisely because it is so important to them" (Grillo, 1). Obviously the losing the marijuana business would seriously hurt these cartels, and legalizing marijuana would do so in a big way.

Implementing a law like this seems like a daunting task, but it could be done simply and effectively. Money would be raised to lobby for the law and put out advertisements by the great amount of wealthy supporters of legalization there are in our country. From an NBCBayArea.com article entitled "Marijuana Legalization Dead in Calif. (For Now)" by Chris Roberts, he says "Donors to be tapped for a legalization initiative included Facebook billionaires as well as well-heeled moneypits like George Soros, who donated $1 million to Prop 19 about a week before the 2010 election" (Roberts, 1). Prop 19 would have legalized marijuana in California- imagine the rally and support a nationwide legalization would acquire.

The law will legalize marijuana for both medicinal and recreational uses. Medicinal marijuana will be distributed through pharmacies, and marijuana will also be allowed to be sold at coffee shops, smoking accessory stores, and dispensaries dedicated to selling marijuana. Sales on marijuana will be taxed by the government. Medicinal need for marijuana will be defined in the law as being defined by a doctor's prescribing a patient marijuana. People may argue against this, as shown in this quote from Newt Gingrich on the marijuana laws in California: "You find local doctors who will prescribe it for anybody that walks in" (Gingrich, 1). However, with marijuana also legalized for recreational use, most people will not need to get a medical marijuana prescription. My implementation requires those who want to use marijuana recreationally to be over the age of 21, and not at risk for mental problems associated with marijuana as determined by a psychologist working for the government. Any person seeking to use marijuana for recreational use will have an evaluative meeting with one of these psychologists. It may be a concern that the psychologists will give marijuana to people who are unfit anyway, or that store owners or legally allowed users might sell marijuana to underage people, but a heavy fine, upwards of ten thousand dollars, will be set in place to deter that kind of activity. This is much better for users than to have to go to a drug dealer who will sell anyone anything.

For those scared that the law will create more younger users, my implementation of this law should cool their jets. It is important to understand that, as written in the article from the scientific journal, Journal of Addictive Diseases, "Brain Morphological Changes and Early Marijuana Use: A Magnetic Resonance and Positron Emission Tomography Study" by William Wilson et al, "Subjects who started using marijuana before age 17, compared to those who started later, had smaller whole brain and percent cortical gray matter and larger percent white matter volumes. Functionally, males who started using marijuana before 17 had significantly higher CBF [cerebral blood flow] than other males. Both males and females who started younger were physically smaller in height and weight, with the effects being greater in males" (Coleman et al., 1). The study described in this article showed marijuana had a serious affect on brain development and growth in adolescents. This is an all too dangerous reality, especially considering that in 2002, only 53 percent of twelfth graders believed marijuana use was harmful (DEA, 2). The DEA is pleased with these numbers and display them proudly, but the number would be drastically higher if ads showed the real problems with teens smoking marijuana, such as changes in brain morphology and stunted growth. As stated in the article "Boomerang Effect: Anti-Marijuana Ads May Lead to Marijuana Use" by Jospeph W. Bateman: "These commercials have the clear aim of preventing marijuana use. The purpose might be clear, but the results measuring the effectiveness of these ads are shrouded in controversy" (Bateman, 1). This is why my law would be accompanied by an ad campaign targeted at youth with only facts, acquired from new, peer reviewed, studies on marijuana, that show how marijuana is so harmful to adolescents.

Finally, it is important to understand how marijuana can even have adverse effects on an adult's mind. From the article in the British Medical Journal by Joseph M. Rey and Christopher C. Tennant entitled "Cannabis and mental health More evidence establishes clear link between use of cannabis and psychiatric illness": "these findings strengthen the argument that use of cannabis increases the risk of schizophrenia and depression, and they provide little support for the belief that the association between marijuana use and mental health problems is largely due to self medication" (Rey et al., 1). This is precisely why I will require states to employ psychologists to determine which people should be allowed to smoke marijuana recreationally. If a psychologists approves someone in poor judgment, he or she will be fined heavily.

It may concern some where the money is coming from to pay the psychologists, run the ad campaign, and enforce these laws. But legalizing marijuana would create a sustainable way to do these things, via tax revenue on marijuana as well as the diversion from funds that were used to enforce marijuana's illegality. "Combined federal, state, and local expenditures were estimated at more than $10 billion in 1987 (Nadelmann, 1989), and the costs continue to escalate. The federal antidrug budget alone for 1990 totals $9.4 billion (Washington Post, 1989)...Fortune magazine estimated the potential tax earnings from legal marijuana sales at $11 billion per year, and that only accounts for taxes on the marijuana, not including taxes on the income generated by the legal sellers, distributors, and producers (Kupfer, 1988)" (McVay, 3). So there is much money to be made to support my implementation, which will likely even make the government gain profit, leading to great longevity.

The illegality of marijuana in the U.S. must come to an end because it costs billions of dollars per year, causes violence, and does not even begin to stop the use of marijuana in the United States. My solution will solve the problem because it will likely generate tax money that will at least come close to outweighing the costs needed to implement it, deeply harm the drug cartels causing violence, and treat those that will inevitably use marijuana in a safer way. The money that is gained will certainly justify the costs of my solution, because in our current system money is spent keeping marijuana illegal without gaining anything back.

It becomes obvious when reading the DEA's faulty arguments that the real issue at hand is that the United States has a government too stubborn to change its ways by looking at studies and perspectives on marijuana without a biased viewpoint. This stubborn effect is multiplied when this questionable information is released to the public who for a large part will accept it without a second thought.

There are many factors keeping marijuana from being legalized. But you can do your part, and take the action necessary to change our government by writing your congressional representatives, donating to the cause, or spreading the truth to your friends and family. The time is now to legalize marijuana, or the stubbornness of illegality will continue for years to come.

WORKS CITED

Chris Roberts. "Marijuana Legalization Dead in Calif. (for Now)." NBC Bay Area. NBC Universal Inc., 2011. Web. 30 Nov, 2011.

Gingrich, Newt. Interviewed by Chris Moody. Yahoo News. Yahoo! Inc., 2011. Web. 30 Nov, 2011.

Ioan Grillo. "A New Way to Fight Mexico's Viscious Cartels: Legalizing Marijuana." Time World. Time Inc., 2011. Web. 30 Nov, 2011.

Joseph M Rey, Christopher C Tennant. "More evidence establishes clear link between use of cannabis and psychiatric illness." British Medical Journal 325.7374 (2002): 1183 - 1184.

Jospeph W. Bateman. "Boomerang Effect: Anti-Marijuana Ads May Lead to Marijuana Use." The Drugspot. 2005. Web. 30 Nov, 2011.

McVay, Douglas. The Drug Legalization Debate. SAGE Publications, 1991.

R. Edward Coleman, Thomas Hawk, Roy Mathew, James Provenzale, Timothy Turkington, and William Wilson. "Brain Morphological Changes and Early Marijuana Use: A Magnetic Resonance and Positron Emission Tomography Study." Journal of Addictive Diseases 19.1 (2000): 1 - 22.

Save our Society from Drugs. Save our Society from Drugs, 2009. Web. 30 Nov. 2011.

Schedules of Controlled Substances, 21 CFR, pt. 13 (2011).

Speaking Out Against Drug Legalization. Washington: Drug Enforcement Administration, 2010.

"States' Rights." Gale Encyclopedia of US History. 1st ed. 2008.

United States. Dept. of Justice. Drug Enforcement Administration. FY 2010 Performance Budget Congressional Budget Submission. Washington: GPO, 2010.

United States. Executive Office of the President of the United States. Office of National Drug Control Policy. The National Drug Control Strategy, 1998: Budget Summary. Washington: GPO, 1998.