LEGALIZATION OF MEDICINAL MARIJUANA IS THE FIRST STEP

If the Wisconsin legislature passes the Jacki Rickert Medical
Marijuana Act (Assembly bill 554, Senate bill 368), it will become
legal for Wisconsinites to use the drug for medicinal purposes.

But does this go far enough?

Studies have shown that medicinal cannabis can help a number of
illnesses: glaucoma, Tourette syndrome and Crohn's disease, just to
name a few.

And this doesn't mean that there's a bunch of sick people walking
around lighting up joints all the time. Cannabis can be made into
other forms, as well.

It seems only natural that something that has proven to be helpful
should be approved, but, as we all know, that's not where the problem
lies.

Legalizing medicinal marijuana would open up a door that would perhaps
lead to people trying to cheat the system so that they can get their
hands on legal weed.

So why not avoid this problem and just legalize marijuana all
together?

The government could tax it and use the revenue to support our
economic crisis. The tax on cigarettes certainly seems to have paved
the way for taking in some extra tax revenue.

There's also the argument that alcohol is legal, and carries far more
health risks than marijuana. Some argue that marijuana is a gateway
drug, that is, people who smoke weed are more likely to try or abuse
harder drugs.

Studies have shown that smoking tobacco is more likely to lead to hard
drug use than smoking cannabis.

Let's also not throw away the fact that keeping marijuana illegal has
not stopped people from using it.

It seems that cannabis' pros are starting to outweigh its cons, and
this only means one thing: it should be legal.

Sure, if smoked, cannabis greatly ups a person's chance of getting
lung cancer. But so do cigarettes. And sure, marijuana may, in some
cases, alter a person's brain, but no more than alcohol.

So side effects aside, I'll return to the fact that the government
could throw a heavy tax on cannabis. The government makes money and
pot smokers all over the state get to rejoice that they can use
legally. Everybody wins right?

Well, of course not. Legalizing medical marijuana is most definitely a
step in the right direction, but by weighing the pros and cons,
legalizing it all together may start to not seem like such a bad idea.