Legalizing Recreational Marijuana Essay

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Legalizing Recreational Marijuana

From early childhood Americans are led to believe that marijuana is a “dangerous and addictive drug that has destroyed the lives of millions of teens and adults.” (saferchoice.com) Society is terribly wrong, like alcohol or cigarettes anything can have a small chance of making someone less successful in their lives. Marijuana is the dried “flower” off of a cannabis plant. The chemical that gets a person “high” is called THC or delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol. There are many types of ways to smoke marijuana such as blunts which is broken up marijuana rolled up into a sheet-like piece of tobacco usually used to roll cigarettes. There are also pipes, bongs, joints etc. Marijuana should be less of a “public enemy” than the other drugs we the people have helped make legal such as alcohol and cigarettes because marijuana is not a threat to one’s life. Marijuana should be legalized because unlike other legal drugs, marijuana has had no deaths recorded, it protects and helps the brain as well as the lungs, it would contribute to ending the recession, and other legal drugs have caused way more injury and death.
Although marijuana is an “illicit” drug, it has no negative long term effects on one’s brain. Marijuana definitely does effect the brain positively by the brain releasing dopamine, a chemical that creates short term happiness, after smoking and also promotes brain cell formation, but does not harm brain cells at all. A study was performed at Saskatchewan University by Professor Xia Zhang and some of her colleagues where they gave a group of rats a high amount of a synthetic form of THC to observe the short and long term effects of THC. “It turns out, this synthetic THC-like compound actually increased the rate of brain cell formation in the hippocampus (neurogenesis) by a whopping forty percent.” (budfacts.com) When the THC interacted with the rats rather than causing the brain harm by killing the brain cells, it helped the rate at which the cells were formed. Not only does marijuana positively effect the brain, but also benefits the lungs.
Provided that every decision has a consequence, marijuana will benefit the lungs with little to no injury after long term use. Smoking marijuana increases lung air flow and increases lung capacity, but long term use may harm the lungs. “The data also showed that high-use of the plant, about one joint a day for 7 years had little to no negative impact on lung air flow rates or lung volume.” (Barrett) After years and years of smoking marijuana there is a slight possibility that the lungs could have been damaged, but the lungs already were helped by marijuana. Not only does marijuana help improve lung functions, it would greatly impact our government in collecting more taxes. Due to marijuana legalizing in Colorado and Washington this election, the government has come to recognize that taxing the drug will bring in millions in tax revenue and also will shed light on the black-market marijuana industry. Since marijuana is legal in those states recreational use stores will be opened, with marijuana being the most widely used drug, residents of Colorado and Washington will buy the product as well as tourists. “Keeping it illegal… means that the most benefit flows to illegitimate members of society: dealers and cartels… The legalization of Marijuana could take as much as $10 billion away from cartels and dealers.” (Erb) With the legalization of marijuana instead of drug dealers getting all the profit it would put money into the government to pull us out of this recession. While the government is “stealing” the dealers business it’s causing crime to decrease because the government would have lower prices on the herb and lower classed individuals wouldn’t have to commit crimes to afford what they need. As seen here marijuana would bring in a great amount of money to help all of society, but marijuana benefits people’s lives while
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