Legalization of drugs

How many of your friends have been arrested for the possession of marijuana? I’m guessing a few of them already have or will eventually, they will have to live with that mistake for the rest of their lives because unlike alcohol and cigarettes which are worse for you marijuana is illegal. Unlike alcohol and cigarettes marijuana actually has health benefits which raises the question, why is marijuana illegal? Marijuana was illegalized in 1937 at a federal level; Harry J. Anslinger director of the federal bureau of narcotics led this push against the illegalization of marijuana. Anslinger was an extremely ambitious man, and he recognized the Bureau of Narcotics as an amazing career opportunity a new government agency with the opportunity to define both the problem and the solution. He immediately realized that opiates and cocaine wouldn’t be enough to help build his agency, so he latched on to marijuana and started to work on making it illegal. Anslinger immediately drew upon the themes of racism and violence to draw national attention to the problem he wanted to create. After two years of campaigning against marijuana Anslinger brought his case to congress in a remarkably short set of hearings marijuana was illegalized.

So in the short of it marijuana was illegalized to make some politicians career. So why should we legalize it? Well marijuana has many proven medicinal benefits including the ability to alleviate depression and I believe more people would smoke marijuana instead of cigarettes, which are the number one cause of death in America. There’s also the fact that enforcement of this law destroys millions of lives and turns up inconsistent results. We currently spend billions of dollars every year to chase peaceful people who happen to like to use marijuana. These people get locked up in prison and the taxpayers have to foot the bill. We could save billions of dollars every year as a nation if we stop wasting money locking people up for having marijuana. In addition, if marijuana were