Marijuana is can be good and yet still bad. It’s a plant that has the power to be beneficial to mankind and harmful to it. However, putting aside the many cons of legalizing marijuana, the pros of legalizing marijuana still far outweigh the cons.
We hear the most common argument against marijuana is that it’s harmful for the human body, that danger is amplified when taken in large doses, however any substance can be harmful to the human body when taken in mass doses? Ingestion of an excessive amount of food is considered unhealthy, then is that not bad for them? Let’s look at water, for example. Close to two-thirds of our human body is made of water and let’s agree that it is quite obviously essential for human life. Case in point, drinking water in excess in a short amount of time can lead to death. Let’s look back to 2007 when a radio station held a on-air water drinking contest. A contestant drank approximately six liters of water in a three hour span, the contestant began vomiting and thus went home with a headache. The contestant then died some hours later from a water overdose.
Now let’s look at marijuana, it’s comparatively harmful, if not less, to our human body as alcohol and tobacco are. Tobacco is a leading preventable cause of death in the United States, however it’s second in line to alcohol and its active ingredient is nicotine a highly addictive substance. Alcohol, on the other hand, causes many health problems those largely regarding the liver and kills more than 100,000 people every year. Although marijuana has similar risks as cigarettes, marijuana can be medicinally used to assist in the treatment of a variety of illnesses including but not limited to; asthma, AIDS, cancer, and other illnesses. In truth the one thing separating alcohol and tobacco from marijuana is the fact that it’s illegal. Regardless of these reasons, why does our government have any say in what we should or shouldn’t consume? Whether or not we choose to use marijuana is a personal decision and nobody should be allowed to infringe those rights. Even though I personally think the government should not have a say in this, I do believe that consumers should be educated about this before using it so that they do know what they’re getting into. Marijuana can also be spoke of as a very a gateway or stepping stone for teens and adolescents to start with. One of the largest reasons for this is due to the ease of obtaining it. This clearly shows that the illegalization of marijuana isn’t not effective in the first place.
Marijuana has a generous economical effect on the United States, as well. It is estimated that the US government spends approximately $10 billion per year in an attempt to keep marijuana off our streets; at this
