Should cannabis be legalized?While it would be nice to think that the current drug laws are working, you only have to go into a school to find that this is emphatically not the case. Clearly, despite the money spend on keeping Britain clear of drugs, only a fraction of imports are ever uncovered, and something has to change. The case for legalizing cannabis can be based around two arguments. First off is the obvious argument, and that it is impossible to stop people from importing cannabis illegally, or form even growing it themselves.
Weather that is in there homes or on privet property outside. No matter how hard you try, you will never rid the US of this drug. More importantly, this drug is not a harmful drug like ecstasy, heroin, acid, and actually has medical benefits to those suffering from arthritis, and other forms of diseases, helping to ease the pain. Legalizing the drug would have no adverse social consequences, and could even bring peace in time of war like the indians used it for.
Money could be diverted into areas where it could be put to better use, such as policing hard core drugs and even paying off the national debt. The supply of cannabis could even be regulated by the government. The government could also make more money by putting an import tax on cannabis. Also the police would know who it is who is buying the drugs.
By making a trivial drug like cannabis illegal, the police are simply forcing the problem underground, where they have no knowledge or control, contributing to crime. the legalization of this drug would also cause the county jails and prisons to become less full making more room for the people out there that commit real crimes like murder and rape. The second argument is that the government has no right to prevent people who want to use cannabis form doing so. You could even associate the use of cannabis with the drinking of alcohol.
It temporally changes the way you behave. You can become addicted to it. It can be misused (but in that sense you have to bring to attention that cannabis is the only none legal drug that has not and does not have the potential to kill someone). You could indeed say that alcohol is worse than cannabis, since it has no tangible health uses, and its intact leads to aggressive behavior that effects others, rather than pacifying you like cannabis. However, apart from a few right-wing Christians, there are very few people calling for alcohol to be made illegal, and such a ban would be impossible to enforce (shown in America, where drinking was actually found to have increased once it was made illegal).
The argument is that people should be free to do as they please (within reason) and the use of cannabis should be a personal responsibility like drinking already is. Where ever you stand on soft drugs like cannabis, the first argument is basically common sense. We all know that drugs are always going to get in and be in our culture some how, and the stricter the controls, the less that is actually known about the people and the produce involved. The second argument is purely a personal viewpoint. In my opinion, resources would be much better used to prevent real menaces such as hard-core drugs like acid heroin and cocaine.
Equally, by taxing cannabis in the way that imports and alcohol are, the government could rake in large amounts of money into education about drugs, and funding drug rehab clinics which could help reduce the problem. Whatever your views, the current system clearly isn’t working, and as most of us know the existing legislation on cannabis is based on history and politics, not knowledge of the drug. If you disagree with legalizing cannabis, its up to you to come up with a better solution.
