Obviously the current drug policy of our government today is fails to be effective. Drug laws have been a main cause for the increase of street crime, corruption, violence, and disrespect for the criminal justice system. We see stories on the news about people being killed on the street every day over drugs. To many people drugs are only an inner-city problem, but in reality they affect all of us users and non-users. I believe that the negative affects we associate with drugs would be greatly reduced if the United States adopted a policy towards the decriminalization of marijuana.
Obviously Prohibition didn't work out well for the country, so why should we have criminal punishments for possession of marijuana? In fact, having these substances be illegal has only caused increased crime rates. But let's get the facts straight about how marijuana even became illegal in the first place. After 130 years of being legal, a man named Harry Anslinger, the commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics and author of Marijuana: Assassin of Youth, brought the potential problems of marijuana into the public eye.
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United StatesIn his book, Anslinger portrayed images of Mexican and Negro criminals, as well as young boys, who became killers while under the influence of marijuana. With the added public pressure, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed into law the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937. It's frustrating to see how stereotypes and propaganda has duped the American culture so easily on terms of marijuana.
Marijuana reappeared in the mid 1960's and widespread objection to the use of marijuana remained because of the set of values and lifestyles associated with it, but use appeared in colleges and among middle-class youths in the suburbs. Marijuana became a symbol of a counter-culture, and youthful rebellion. As a consequence, marijuana use...