Business law

Legalization of Marijuana

Introduction

Views on the legalization of marijuana tend to vary . On surveys completed by the National Opinion Research Center between 1973 and 1994 the trend appears to be shifting towards legalization . In 1996 , twenty six percent of the respondents believed marijuana should be legalized compared to just eighteen percent in 1973 . Legalization tended to be more favored by males than females , those age eighteen to twenty nine college educated with incomes under thirty thousand dollar living in the West and democratic or independent

The legalization debate today

is very different from when it began with the hearings for the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937 that effectively made it illegal through high taxation . In the 17 years prior to the Act , only seven articles were listed in the Reader 's Guide to Periodic Literature and the main concerns expressed at the time were that first , farmers would be inconvenienced by having to kill a plant that grew wild in many parts of the country , second , domestic hemp industries would be damaged third , paint and varnish companies would have to find a new source of oil then obtained from hemp seeds , and fourth , impact of having to remove hemp from bird seed on singing birds . Most of the information presented against marijuana was hearsay about how it turned people into murderers and would be used by the underworld to enslave youths , or it was tinged with anti-Hispanic tones about migrant workers . In the ensuing years , there has been a near continuous and highly polarized debate concerning marijuana . Policy arguments have and often continue to be framed at the extremes of draconian prohibition /criminalization , on the one side , and unfettered legalization /miracle cure plant promotion on the other . Today , marijuana is both the most commonly used illicit drug (suggesting that many people do not agree with or care about the risks ) and , for adolescents , the illegal drug most likely to be mentioned in arrests , emergency room admissions , and autopsy reports The researchers , attempt to contrast the major arguments being made by both sides and explore whether there is any middle ground in the continuing debate over the legal status of marijuana in the United States

Even a cursory review of marijuana policy discussions leads to the conclusion that this is a debate of extremes : soft versus hard drugs good versus bad drugs , supply reduction versus demand reduction , miracle drug versus carcinogenic , prohibition versus legalization . It is also apparent that the debate is often , conducted with code words that say as much about issues of social class , race , gender , generation , and institutional self-interest than about drugs and drug policies Complicating matters further , both sides of the debate consider the status quo unacceptable and seem to use some of the same data to reach radically different conclusions

Right to Use

One of the most fundamental concepts for the proponents of legalization is the idea that individuals should have the right to decide whether to use marijuana just like cigarettes or alcohol . Most...