The Advantages of being legal

Essay by Anonymous UserCollege, UndergraduateA+, April 1997

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There are many arguments on the question of whether or not to legalize marijuana.

The benefits of legalizing marijuana include its medicinal value and its many uses to

produce commercial products like paper, rope, oil, textiles, and canvas. Another good

reason to legalize marijuana is that hundreds of thousands of non-violent drug offenders

are overpopulating prisons, costing taxpayers millions of dollars. Legalization would also

put marijuana dealers out of business and it would bring revenue to the government like

alcohol and tobacco does. Some opposition to legalizing marijuana is that traffic fatalities

would increase, and that more people like school teachers and bus drivers would be

smoking legally purchased marijuana. They also believe that more young people would

smoke more marijuana.

Marijuana is medicine and has been used as medicine for thousands of years to

treat a wide variety of ailments. It is one of the safest therapeutically active substances

known. Marijuana is often useful in the treatment of cancer, AIDS, glaucoma, multiple

sclerosis, epilepsy and chronic pain. For cancer patients, marijuana alleviates the nausea,

vomiting, and loss of appetite caused by chemotherapy treatment. It does the same for

people with AIDS. By reducing intraocular pressure, marijuana helps slow or halt the

gradual increasing eye pressure suffered by glaucoma patients. Marijuana reduces the

muscle pain and spastically caused by multiple sclerosis. It also helps some patients control

their bladders. With some epileptic patients, marijuana prevents seizures. Marijuana is also

a very effective pain reliever.

Hemp, a plant mainly grown for its use as a fiber source, is from the same plant

that produces marijuana. It is different because industrial hemp is grown with minute

amounts of delta-9 and tetrahydrocannibinol, abbreviated as THC, which is the element in

marijuana that gives the 'high sensation'. Industrial hemp is one of nature's strongest...