Argumentative Essay: The Legalization Of Marijuana

A subject that seems to ruffle everyone’s feathers when it is brought up, is the topic of legalization of marijuana. When people hear of marijuana, they automatically think negatively about it, mostly because it is classified as an illegal drug. There has been a long history with marijuana and the “problems” that it has caused over the years. Starting out as an herb, marijuana slowly became classified, along with all the other more dangerous drugs, under the same category as them. But if people would take a step back and stop looking at cannabis as a drug, and look past it being illegal, would it make people think differently about it? I believe that if people knew of all the benefits we would gain from it being legal, they might feel differently …show more content…
Legalizing cannabis brings with it the opportunity for thousands of new jobs for the low-income families across the country. By giving these people the opportunity to make an honest living, it would help get the United States out of most, if not all, of the debt that we have gotten ourselves into. The states that have already passed the legalization of marijuana, such as Colorado and Washington, are showing tax revenue and fees near 135 million dollars, so the tax money the United States could be getting from the sales of marijuana would be astronomical if all 50 states were on board with the legalization. It would help pay off debt, so we could start focusing on improving things like education and health care in our country. We could use all of that money to focus on things to help improve our nation, instead of spending that money on criminals, that have been locked up because of their wrong …show more content…
The United States has more people in prison than any other country. More than 75% of these imprisonments are due to arrests made for possession of marijuana. The amount of people in prison for marijuana far exceeds the amount of people that are in jail for murder or other serious crimes. In my opinion, it is crazy for someone to serve more time for possession of marijuana, than someone that commits murder. What is sad, is that it happens all the time. People have different opinions about legalizing marijuana, but at the end of the day, killing someone should carry a larger consequence than someone caught with an “illegal drug.” If a person chooses to ruin their life with drugs, that is their choice. But if someone decides to take someone else’s life, it should not carry a lesser consequence. In countries where marijuana is legal, such as Amsterdam, crime rates are much lower than places where it is not legal, such as the United States. If we added up all the money we spend by arresting and booking people for possession of marijuana, it would also be an astronomical amount of money. Each year, the amount of money spent on officers arresting people in possession of cannabis is more than $3.6 billion, and the money we use to keep them locked up, costs us more than $31,000 per year, per prisoner, arrested for possession of marijuana. Not only from the money aspect