IN THE WAR ON MARIJUANA

WHO ARE THE CASUALTIES?

Written by: Gary Barran

Supported by: Millions more

 

~ This is a rough draft of the coverpage, I'm trying to find a a way to integrate 2 marijuana leaves in place of the A's in marijuana. I'm having problems getting it to work with WordArt though.

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Imagine your out one day and you find yourself being mugged. Your choices are simple- your life or your money. So you think about it and realize you only have twenty bucks on you. So now you can fight to keep your twenty bucks and risk being shot or give up the money and be twenty dollars poorer. Most of us would give up the money for our lives' and the reasoning would be much the same for all of us- its just not worth it. It would take somebody seconds to make that decision in a real situation. Consider it a crude cost benefit analysis if you will. Although this is an extreme example, it proves that common sense tells us that if the costs outweigh the benefits, then its just not worth it. It seems simple enough but we are still unable to apply this mode of thinking to our own drug policy. The money being spent on marijuana arrests,anti-marijuana propoganda, and other facets of the "War on Drugs" is just not worth it. The facts and figures are there. It;s pretty much known that the war on marijuana costs us billions and reaps little to no benefit. The only thing current marijuana laws effectively do is make criminals out of otherwise law-abiding, tax paying citizens. Of all the felons arrested for marijuana possession between 1980-1992, 58% had no prior record and 92% of them hadn't owned or possessed a gun. These people are hardly threats to society, yet have their careers and possibly lives ruined over a possession charge. We don't mind paying taxes to keep rapists and murderers in jail, but when's the last time you saw "Weed Smoker finally captured" on the front page of your local newspaper? Opponents of decriminilization want to blame drugs for turf wars, shootings, robberies, etc. But what they failed to realize is that by keeping marijuana illegal they are forcing people "underground" to get it from drug dealers, as opposed to a say a coffee shop like in Amsterdam. The government is marginalizing a large portion of society by making them deal with people they would otherwise never need to.

After all, the marijuana policy , much like other drug policies, we follow now was used to persecute people that the government wanted to push out of mainstream society- I.E. Mexicans and African Americans. A policy with such impure intentions needs to be revamped. Now that more people from all walks of life OPENLY smoke marijuana, its getting harder to justify criminalizing a growing portion of the American population.

The government can't label smokers as losers or people that don't contribute to society anymore because there are physicians, scholars,CEO's, and countless more contributing members of society that advocate recreational marijuana use.

Its obvious the current marijuana policy doesn't keep criminals contained, but instead hinders millions of smokers who are otherwise law abyding citizen. And if you don't think it "hinders" anything, just ask anyone who's had to explain a possession charge at a job interview.

I've spared you all the boring statistics involving how much money we could save decriminalizing marijuana as well as how much we could save if we didn't have to prosecute marijuana offenders. And I haven't even gone into detail on how many respected nationwide polls show that most of America views alcohol and tobacco as more harmful than marijuana. Let's not even mention the fact that marijuana is the only "drug", legal or otherwise, that has not been proven addictive. These are all things that we should all know by now, yet we've only made baby steps towards decriminalization. It's up to us to sway the government ourselves, on a larger scale than we've been doing up to this point. That means that people other than marijuana smokers need to get involved because this issue affects them as well. All of our tax dollars pay for anti- marijuana PSAs, jail cells, and drug treatment programs for marijuana offenders. Don't wait for one of your loved ones or, worse yet, yourself to become a victim of this country's marijuana policy before you start caring about this issue. Form groups, talk to politicians, write your senator- anything.Former President Jimmy Carter said it best in his speech to Congress " Penalties against possession of a drug should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself; and where they are, they should be changed. Nowhere is this more clear to me than in the laws against possession of marijuana in private for personal use." That was written in 1977, we're long due for a change.