Legalize It!

On Nov. 8, 2016, California citizens 18 and older will be voting on more than just our next president and members of Congress. They will be voting on key proposed measures and statues that will affect the future of our state. One of the most controversial of those on the ballot is Proposition 64, which, if passed, would allow legal sale of recreational marijuana and hemp for people 21 and older.By now, the marijuana debate has become one of the most prevalent in America: marijuana (also known as pot, weed, kush and several others) is illegal for recreational purposes in the majority of the United States, with the exception of Colorado, Washington, Alaska, Oregon and Washington D.C.. 27 states and the District of Columbia have legalized medical marijuana for those who qualify, but that still leaves 23 states in the country where marijuana is completely illegal for both medical and recreational use. And yet, some government officials are still adamantly against marijuana and its uses.So why do we still brand marijuana as an evil substance? The “War on Drugs” has cost the U.S. government over $51 billion, much of this going towards anti-marijuana rhetoric. Why do we still rely on these horribly outdated arguments to keep marijuana illegal? Isn’t it obvious that the advantages outweigh the downfall from it being legalized?For one thing, marijuana is significantly better for the human body than alcohol, according to the World Health Organization and president Barack Obama (in a quote to CNN). According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), from 2006-10, alcohol was responsible for 88,000 deaths per year (this not factoring in deaths caused by automobile-related and other accidents). Alcohol is also linked with liver disease, amongst a myriad of other negative medical side effects.In stark contrast, Donald Abrams, chief of oncology at San Francisco General Hospital, said the following to USA Today: "In my 37 years as a physician, the number of patients I've admitted to the hospital with complications from marijuana use is zero. The number I've admitted due to alcohol use is profound.”With marijuana, there are simply fewer threats. First of all, there’s the pressing issue of running out of food and having insatiable cravings to watch television shows from your childhood. There have been some claims that smoking marijuana can lead to bronchitis and inflammation of the air passage, but due to the fact that marijuana is still Schedule 1 (meaning that it’s federally illegal to own or even to do experiments on the plant), we don’t have enough research on the drug to suggest the extent of this. Other Schedule 1 drugs include quaaludes, heroin and MDMA, all of which cause extreme physical dependence and aren’t even comparable to marijuana in terms of safety and health risks. It’s confusing that many harmful drugs, such as oxycontin, codeine, Xanax and Adderall, are legal to purchase with a prescription while marijuana remains illegal. But of course, the hardcore marijuana protesters have all sorts of claims about the dangers of marijuana.If we trace the origins of the anti-marijuana group, we can go all the way back to the 1930’s and look at corporate greed, fear-mongering and a man named Harry J. Anslinger, who promoted himself and the division of government he managed (the Federal Bureau of Narcotics) by making it ‘anti-Christian’ to inhale marijuana. He did this by making a slew of illogical correlations by statements such as “marijuana leads to pacifism and communist brainwashing; you smoke a joint and you’re likely to kill your brother.” In addition, the hemp crop, which is what marijuana comes from, can also be used to create paper, fabric, and herbal remedies. This presented competition for wealthy industrialists, who launched smear campaigns (reminiscent of the Prohibition age of just a few decades prior) from the 1930’s on.The reality is that many of the seemingly severe numbers that protesters will find to support their claims are either falsified, or have been proven wrong with more scientific research, as in the case of a National Institute for Drug Abuse (NIDA) study from 1994 that suggests 1 in 11 users become ‘addicted to marijuana’. While yes, this applies to emotional dependence, rates of physical dependence (a much more serious medical condition) are far lower. There’s even data from the Washington Post that indicates that in states where marijuana is legalized, teenage substance abuse is becoming less frequent. The claims and the facts never seem to add up, especially when you consider how harmful the illegalization of marijuana has been to America in the grand perspective.We can’t truly call ourselves the “land of the free” when according to the New York Times, as high as 1 in 100 American citizens are behind bars, or roughly 2.2 million people (as of 2013). Even more shocking than this is the number of people arrested in 2013 in the U.S. for nonviolent drug crimes, which exceeded 1.5 million, 609,423 of which were arrested for marijuana possession. How can we claim to be one of the most advanced countries in the world, and hold 4.4% of the world’s population, when we hold 22% of the world’s prisoners? And how can we brag about our judicial system when we imprison hundreds of thousands of people every year for possession of a fundamentally safe drug?It’s been estimated that individual states could raise a large amount of money by legalizing marijuana and taxing and regulating the sales of marijuana. In California alone, the estimated value is $1.4 billion dollars. The four states that have legalized recreational marijuana have already begun this process, and are reaping the results, whereas the rest of us are still in the Stone Age in comparison (no pun intended).Here’s where you come in: On November 8th, when those of you old enough to vote go into the booths to choose our next president, you’ll see a box asking you to vote on Proposition 64. Please vote responsibly, for the future of our country depends on well thought out choices from voters. Hillary Clinton has stated that she would like to move marijuana from a Schedule 1 drug to a Schedule 2 drug, so we can continue to do governmental research on its medical benefits. Justin Trudeau, the prime minister of Canada, intends to introduce a bill that allows nationwide legalization of marijuana for recreational use. His motives are the same as ours: he wants to minimize the problems and effects of a drug trade, and wants to see a fall in the number of people arrested for marijuana possession.There is hope, my green-loving amigos. It seems obvious to me that we should follow the four states that have already legalized marijuana, and do the same. Let’s get past the illogic that went into making marijuana illegal in the first place, and make it legal for all (people of age) to enjoy.Note: The Samohi does not condone illegal drug use.