MARIJUANA SHOULD BE LEGAL

The marijuana debate has been argued this way or that ever since the
late sixties with no definitive answer or solution in sight. Pot
advocates obviously want to, as Peter Tosh would say, "Legalize It."

American society has shunned the idea of legalizing marijuana,
labeling it taboo through various anti-pot commercials. You know,
like "Parents. The Anti-Drug," or the one where the guys are getting
high in a drive-through, then proceed to run over a little girl on a bike.

Well, before tackling the whole issue of legalization we should
consider some facts.

First, we must ponder the question of why marijuana is illegal, while
tobacco and alcohol are not. According to The Gallup Organization's
Annual Consumption Habits poll (conducted July 2005) about 63 percent
of America's 295,734,134 people drink alcohol. That's 186,312,504
people. That's a lot of people and tax dollars.

Now consider that according to the Journal of the American Medical
Association there are about 85,000 annual deaths due to alcohol. If
that number fails to impress it should be noted that it doesn't
include the 17,401 drunken driving related deaths a year, which
tallies the death toll to about 102,401.

Not to mention the 327,000 people that were injured in drunk-driving
accidents last year. In respect to tobacco use, according to "A
National Action Plan for Tobacco Cessation," there are about 24
million smokers in America, which is less than alcohol consumers. Yet
tobacco still yields the highest annual preventable death rate
claiming about 435,000 people a year. Now why should you care about
these numbers?

Because according to the same medical journal that published those
findings, the use of marijuana is responsible for, are you ready for
this, zero deaths a year. That's right, zero.

In fact, the US Drug Abuse Warning Network says that instances of
drugs in medical examiners' autopsy reports says that marijuana,
although found in conjunction with other drugs, have not been shown
to cause an overdose death.

As far as driving goes, cases of marijuana-induced car accidents or
deaths are so scarce there is barely any pot-specific information
about it on the Internet.

So now that we've established that marijuana, on its own, doesn't
kill people. Why again is it illegal? Maybe we should approach the
problem from the view of, "Why should marijuana be legalized?" From
the government's standpoint the answer is easy: taxes.

What else do we have to say? But on another note, the legalization of
pot can have some very profound effects on the crime rate.

In 2003, 45 percent of the 1,678,192 total drug abuse arrests were
for marijuana. That makes about 755,186 arrests of which 662,886 were
made for possession of marijuana.

The decriminalization of pot (which means that instead of getting
arrested for possession, one is just fined) would effectively cut
down almost half of the drug arrests in America, limiting arrests
solely to felony offenses.

Currently the 11 states that have decriminalized pot, including Ohio,
can also look to save a substantial amount of money that would
otherwise be used on incarcerating minor offenders.

Decriminalization of marijuana saves California $100 million per
year. Do not forget the millions of dollars the government would make
in taxes. So with a government so focused on the bottom line, America
should seriously think about putting some of those numbers in its
pipe and smoking it.