Legalization of marijuana

Alright, last time I listed the 7 reasons why many argue against the legalization of marijuana, and this time, I promise I will not contradict myself. So, let's begin with 8 reasons why people say marijuana SHOULD be legalized, shall we? 1. The government has no right to enforce marijuana laws. "There are always reasons why laws exist. While some advocates for the status quo claim that marijuana laws prevent people from harming themselves, the most common rationale is that they prevent people from harming themselves and from causing harm to the larger culture. But laws against self-harm always stand on shaky ground"predicated, as they are, on the idea that the government knows what's good for you better than you do"and no good ever comes from making governments the guardians of culture." 2. Enforcement of marijuana laws is racially discriminatory. "Racism was part of the charge against marijuana, as newspapers in 1934 editorialized: "Marijuana influences Negroes to look at white people in the eye, step on white men"s shadows and look at a white woman twice." 3. Enforcement of marijuana laws is prohibitively expensive. "Six years ago, Milton Friedman and a group of over 500 economists advocated for marijuana legalization on the basis that prohibition directly costs more than $7.7 billion per year." 4. Enforcement of marijuana laws is unnecessarily cruel. "You don't have to look very hard to find examples of lives needlessly destroyed by marijuana prohibition laws. The government arrests over 700,000 Americans, more than the population of Wyoming, for marijuana possession every year. These new "convicts" are driven from their jobs and families, and pushed into a prison system that turns first-time offenders into hardened criminals." 5. Marijuana laws impede legitimate criminal justice goals. "Just as alcohol prohibition essentially created the American Mafia, marijuana prohibition has created an underground economy where crimes unrelated to marijuana, but connected to people who sell and use it, go unreported. End result: real crimes become harder to solve." 6. Marijuana laws cannot be consistently enforced. "Every year, an estimated 2.4 million people use marijuana for the first time. Most will never be arrested for it; a small percentage, usually low-income people of color, arbitrarily will. If the objective of marijuana prohibition laws is to actually prevent marijuana use rather than driving it underground, then the policy is, despite its astronomical cost, an utter failure from a pure law enforcement point of view." 7. Taxing marijuana can be profitable. "A recent Fraser Institute study found that legalizing and taxing marijuana could produce considerable revenue." 8. Alcohol and tobacco, though legal, are far more harmful than marijuana. "I have written in the past that the case for tobacco prohibition is actually much stronger than the case for marijuana prohibition. Alcohol prohibition has, of course, already been tried - and, judging by the history of the War on Drugs, legislators have apparently learned nothing from this failed experiment." The first point I'd like to elaborate on is the fact that marijuana ruins lives. Millions of people have been sent to jail for possession of a drug. The definition of a drug is a substance that has a physiological effect when ingested or otherwise introduced into the body, in particular. Let's analyze this with a made-up, but realistic, situation... Johnny is a good guy, and he always has been. He's 30 years old, and he's a hard worker. However, one day, he receives a call that his father died. This situation gives him a thought, "I'm 30 years old, and I've never smoked weed a day in my life." So, he decides to try it. He got the realization from his father's death that life is short, so he wants to "live a little". BUT WAIT. He can't because the government says so. He could either always wonder, or he could try it. Either way, Johnny is punished because the "government says so". Do you know what Johnny does? He's a lawyer. If he works a little longer and gets bigger roles in the government, he, too, could be apart of the law-making government. Guess what? Johnny is a regular guy, and so are the men and women in the government. So these regular people are making decisions for Johnny? Let me ask you one thing. Is your name Johnny? No. Therefore, you should not be able to make decisions for Johnny. As long as he isn't causing public disturbances, keeps a clean record, and doesn't cause physical harm to anyone.. Johnny should be able to make his own decisions, including placing the substances of his choice into his body. Now, number 6 on my list states that marijuana regulation cannot be completely regulated, and number 3 on my list addresses the money issue. So basically, in summary, the government is wasting money on punishing people like Johnny for something that millions of people get away with. Sending someone to jail for putting something in their body... Why does the government care so much? Can you answer that? Let's be real here. If the citizen is cooperative and maintains an impeccable record, hell, let them smoke the weed! If they aren't causing a public disturbance, the government shouldn't be involved. Their job is to keep us safe, not create a dictatorship. The definition of dictate is to lay down authoritatively; prescribe: "attempts to dictate policy"; "the right to dictate to me". The government's job is not to dictate my life or make decisions for me. To a certain degree, such a safety, they should regulate the decisions of citizens. However, where does it end? They're controlling children's school lunches, who we marry, what we do or do not put in our bodies.. What's next? Are they going to put surveillance cameras in our houses because hey, that'd solve the problem of not being able to regulate crimes, wouldn't it? NO. WE LIVE IN A FREE COUNTRY. IF I WANT TO SMOKE WEED, I HAVE THE RIGHT. Throughout history it HAS been legal. "Marijuana has been illegal for less than 1% of the time that it"s been in use. Its known uses go back further than 7,000 B.C. and it was legal as recently as when Ronald Reagan was a boy." Why now? Why is the government taking so much action in our lives? People get their rebellious attitudes because the government gives them a reason to! If you take someone's rights away, THEY WILL REBEL. THEY WILL FIGHT BACK. Do you remember the Civil War and the women's rights movement? The African Americans and women didn't sit back and let he government control them. They fought back.. Against slavery! Against discrimination! Against the government and their "say so" on their lives! This law effects everyone because even if you do not smoke marijuana, if you wanted to.. You couldn't because it's illegal. Let's just say that Johnny chose to smoke that night. You only live once, right? Well, turns out that his friend Bill, the cop, decided to drop by that night. Bill smelled the marijuana the second he pulled up to the house, so he arrested Johnny right on the spot. He took an oath as a police officer, so he had to. That night, Johnny called his wife who was visiting her mother in Florida, and he told her he was in jail for possession. Their lives weren't ever the same again. After he was released, Johnny was a different man. His "good guy" image had changed when he was behind bars. The people he was around, the violence, and the atmosphere gave him a whole new attitude. When Johnny got out, he got into the drug business, thinking he wouldn't get caught. Jail changed him. That night when he smoked weed, he was alright. He was just a regular guy doing his own thing, making his own decisions. Maybe he wouldn't have gotten into the drug business if marijuana wasn't illegal, and he didn't do to jail. http://civilliberty.about.com... http://www.drugwarrant.com...