Mrs. Schmidt
English 10 Pre-AP, Period 5
1 May 2013
The Problem with Marijuana There are many issue facing America and all of Earth today. One of the biggest is on if marijuana should be legal or not. The answer should be that it should stay illegal, but many people today would not agree. This issue is big as marijuana is one of the most used drugs today and probably will stay that way for a while. This first recorded use of cannabis started in 2300 B.C. when a plant was discovered to be a general pain killer for those who digested it, and has since spread to many regions of the world. During WWII the USA pasted the Marijuana Tax Act to terminate any marijuana sale or use within the borders of the United State. This tax has since caused outpours of people either for or against it. Many presidents such as Ronald Regan and George Bush Sr. have had many anti-drugs rallies outlawing the drug. Also in 1996, the state of California passed Proposition 225 allowing marijuana for medical only medical purposes. Since eighteen others states have passed that Proposition and both Colorado and Washington have legalized it altogether (Rawson). These states should not allow any marijuana at all because marijuana acts as a getaway drug to many more dangerous drugs, marijuana could get into the hands of teens and children, and does not help to cure any known diseases. The first reason marijuana should remain illegal is that marijuana will often act as a getaway drug to even more dangerous drug. Kevin Sabet agrees that marijuana may not be as deadly as many other drugs it is more popular and more addictive. He believes that they could smoke a joint and not be affected, but studies show that usage is four times more popular than it was twenty years ago and many reported users of marijuana have reported to also start using tobacco or alcohol after taking marijuana. These combined using of marijuana and tobacco have led people to IQ loss, mental illness, lung damage and doubling the risk of a car crash (Sabet). Joan Stanford acknowledges that marijuana usage can cause even dangerous drug using which could lead to reckless activities and increases in crime without the person evening knowing what they had done. She knows that like many other hazardous drugs like chemical cocktails, marijuana could be chemically enhanced to make it horrible or even worse that tobacco. The marijuana sellers could easily put nicotine into marijuana to make it addictive to their sellers (Stanford). Stanford and Sabet are surely right about marijuana leading to worse drugs.
The reason many people believe that marijuana will not be used as a getaway drug is that they believe that if marijuana is legal it will reduce drug abuse. Ethan A. Nedalmann argues that if marijuana was legal then people would not need to do crazy stuff to get their pot. He makes the point that if a person just has their drug then they would not have to resort to other drugs that are legal already that are more dangerous than marijuana. He also makes the point that the fight against marijuana is a waste and a burden on law enforcement and the general public (Nedalmann). Even though Nedalmann does make good points, he does not count for Joan Stanford’s point that marijuana is just as bad if not worse then some other drugs and that it could lead to dangerous activities whether it is legal or illegal. Also she says that the sellers of marijuana need to be responsible when selling, legal or not (Stanford). The ideas Nedalmann came up with are good, but they do not hold up to Stanford’s. The second reason that marijuana should be illegal is that if it is legal then it could get into the hand of children and teenagers. Allison Terry knows that twenty years ago the most common drug in school was cigarettes, but in today’s schools many students are changing from cigarettes to marijuana due to the perception that pot is not harmful. Her observations show that one-third of teens has