I'm really getting into this politics stuff
Anyways, recently I was assigned a project in class to write a letter to the editor about my position on marijuana, I needed to defend it and whatnot. This was already a topic I knew a fair amount about but I still find it an interesting topic. The following is my letter (without my info of course)
Michael Cooke
Editorial department
Toronto Star
1 Yonge Street Fifth floor
Dear Michael Cooke,
Did you know that combined, tobacco and alcohol are linked to 520 thousand deaths in the United States*, while marijuana can’t be linked to any deaths, yet marijuana is still illegal? I’m writing to you today to convince you to do anything in your power to help legalize marijuana, both medicinally and recreationally. It sad that we have leaders who think that alcohol and tobacco should be legal yet cannot accept the fact that they are worse then marijuana in almost every way.
The most obvious argument for the legalization of marijuana is that it can’t be linked to any deaths while many legal substances can. Even if you think these other more dangerous substances should be illegal (namely alcohol and tobacco), the fact still remains that marijuana can’t be linked to any deaths. A common response to this is that marijuana causes long term negative neurological effects. "In conclusion, our meta-analysis of studies that have attempted to address the question of longer term neurocognitive disturbance in moderate and heavy cannabis users has failed to demonstrate a substantial, systematic, and detrimental effect of cannabis use on neuropsychological performance.”**.
Another common “reason” given for why marijuana should be illegal is that marijuana is supposedly a gateway drug (meaning it leads to use of worse drugs). There some studies that demonstrate this (Study of Australian Adolescents) and some that don’t (Study on American adolescents); however, even if it were true that people who smoke marijuana are more likely to smoke harder substances (crack or heroin) it isn’t possible to establish a cause and effect relationship between the two. To clarify, what I mean by this is that you can’t say because they were smoking marijuana they started smoking crack just as much as you can say that they started smoking marijuana because they were smoking crack.
In conclusion, I hope I have presented sufficient evidence to convince you that marijuana should be legal. If you still think that marijuana should be illegal then let me ask you this. How can we allow tobacco and alcohol to be legal, yet still make it that marijuana is illegal?
Bibliography:
*"Annual Causes of Death in the United States | Drug War Facts." Welcome | Drug War Facts.
http://drugwarfacts.org/cms/?q=node/30#item1 (accessed October 20, 2010).
**Grant, Igor, et al., "Non-Acute (Residual) Neurocognitive Effects Of Cannabis Use: A Meta-Analytic Study," Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society (Cambridge University Press: July 2003), 9, p. 687.
essentially i think it should be legal (If you wanna get into a discussion about it then read the letter. I address some very common arguments in there)
