Weed

6 Pages 1519 Words

Marijuana must be made legal at least on a medicinal level. Ronald Reagan once said, “Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves.” The question of whether or not illegal drugs should be legalized in the United States has had more publicity in recent years. Proponents of legalization argue that large amounts of money have and are currently being wasted in a failing effort to stop drug use and abuse. They also say that legalization would allow users to have more availability to better treatment programs. Opponents say that legalizing marijuana will only make drug use increase and will eventually cost billions of dollars in health-care costs. They also say that legalizing marijuana could destroy many families. Polls show that the majority of the United States population supports medical marijuana laws. Marijuana also has medicinal properties for ailments such as chronic pain, intraocular (within the eye) pressure, nausea, glaucoma, and more. Furthermore, this is an issue that many people do not know that much about. Hopefully this paper will give knowledge to the common man about the legalization of marijuana.
Marijuana was made illegal as a way to control the immigrant Mexican workers in El Paso, Texas. The El Paso Ordinance of 1914 was passed to ban marijuana use. At this time, immigrant Mexican workers were effectively the only people who used marijuana in the United States. Given this fact, the El Paso Ordinance quickly became a way to control the Mexicans. It is sad to think that our “democratic” government would keep this law in effect after the way it was created and used. Also, the people of El Paso, Texas feared that marijuana gave the Mexicans super-human strength, thus making them dangerous. It is such a ridiculous notion to think that the Texans did not even test the drug to see what effect it had. They were simply afraid of...