Реферат: The Need To Legalize Pot Essay Research

former police commissioner, Jo Daly, who was diagnosed with colon cancer. Jo

started chemotherapy for her cancer, but the side effects included “nuclear

implosion.” Then came a burning pain under the nails of her toes and fingers.

The good news was that she eventually found relief. The bad news was that it

came from marijuana. Daly tried Marinol, a substitute the FDA approved as a

synthetic version of THC (marijuana’s psychoactive ingredient), without success

before she ended up turning to pot. Even after the positive results and

outcomes of patients using marijuana, not everyone is in favor of legalizing the

drug. Some people are still uptight about the whole issue of legalizing

marijuana and continue to set aside the benefits of pot. “This proposition is

not about medicine,” charges Orange County Sheriff Brad Gates, co-chairman of

Citizens for a Drug-Free California, the campaign opposing Prop. 215. “It’s

about the legalization of marijuana” (36).

Well, wake up, America! There are far more benefits from the drug then

just medical. Making the drug legally available, with tight regulatory controls,

would end the black market and with it, much of the violence; legalization would

reduce the number of people in prison, which in turn would reduce the government

budget. For 20 years the authorities in Amsterdam have simply ignored the use

of pot, which is regularly sold in 4,000 coffee shops in amounts up to 30 grams

a customer. Their coffee shops sell an estimated $67,500,000 worth each year

(most of which is Dutch-grown) while the Siberia Cafe sells an estimated $1,000

of hash and marijuana a day. It’s all done in the open, with the Dutch

government collecting the taxes on the receipts (Just 114).

It is reckoned that some thirty-million Americans, roughly Canada’s

population, have tried marijuana. Of those, about ten-million smoke pot every

month, and unlike our president, most of them inhale. In Glasgow, one-half of

all students between the ages of 14 and 25 admit to smoking pot “every day.”

Marijuana has become the US’ ‘biggest cash crop’ despite the death penalty for

growing the plant. The estimated thirty-two billion dollar market has spurred