Keeping Marijuana Illegal

Marijuana is in constant question in today's society. Should it be legalized? Should it be made completely illegal? What are the benefits to completely legalizing it? What are the dangers of making it completely illegal? Should it only be legalized for medical use? These questions are all controversial issues and should be completely analyzed before coming to a conclusion. Marijuana presents absolutely no benefits when legalized. However, making it completely illegal, including for medical use would be a mistake as well. Marijuana is a useful way to appease those suffering chronic sicknesses which to this day are incurable, or hard to cure.

General legalization of marijuana is an overall negative thing for a country and its people, other than medical usages. The negative effects of marijuana in a country seem to be a higher crime rate. Take Holland for example: the United States had 8.22 murders per 100,000 people in 1995 compared with 17.58

Medical marijuana dispensary on Ventura Boulevard ...

General Barry McCaffrey

Marijuana

in the Netherlands. Furthermore the overall per capita crime rates in the United States were 5,278 per 100,000 compared with 7,928 in the Netherlands, according to General Barry McCaffrey (source 4). Marijuana also has many negative effects on a healthy person. The negative effects are: Smoking one marijuana cigarette leads to airway deposition of four times as much cancer-causing tar as does tobacco smoke, cases of cancer, including cancer of the mouth, tongue, larynx, jaw, head, neck, and lungs have been reported in young marijuana smokers that would not occur in tobacco smokers until much later in life; Marijuana has long been known to trigger attacks of mental illness, such as bipolar (manic-depressive) psychosis and schizophrenia, and it has been proven that marijuana users are six times more likely to develop schizophrenia than are non-users; Marijuana causes both dependence and addiction; in females, marijuana use disrupts...