Illegal Drugs: The Legalization Of Marijuana

37,000 deaths a year. One might ask, “Deaths from what?”, and almost immediately assume that some kind of illegal drug was involved. Cannabis, more commonly known as marijuana, is an illegal drug that some may say causes harm, but it is not responsible for these deaths. In fact, alcohol is the cause of that large death rate, and that number does not even include alcohol related accidents. The CDC (U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention) has never had the need to create a category for marijuana related deaths, nor will it ever (Journal of Addictive Behaviors). They are just too rare to be calculated. With this being said there are still some dangers that come with the recreational use of marijuana, as it has been seen to create an opening …show more content…
This public opinion is surprising seeing as one of them, alcohol is legal, while the other, cannabis, is not. People wrongly believe that marijuana is bad for you but alcohol is not. Marijuana can, of course, be unhealthy if used recreationally. The side effects of marijuana, if abused, include racing heart, short-term memory loss, anxiety, and psychotic experiences such as hallucinations (Matthews, 18). So yes, the drug is unhealthy if it is abused. On the contrary, studies and statistics show that alcohol abuse is even worse, seeing as it “has been linked to some 88,000 deaths per year, [however], according to the CDC, while for a number of reasons [deaths] associated with marijuana use are harder to come by” (Brownstein). When the numbers are calculated, marijuana compares to alcohol like the dangers of a falling toothpick to a falling tree. Alcohol abuse is far more dangerous than cannabis abuse, yet the former is legal while the latter is not. The Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs stated that the “rates and severity of marijuana addiction pale in comparison to that of legal addictive drugs, alcohol, and nicotine” (Adams, 54). So, while there are some slight dangers associated with recreational cannabis use, there are far greater risks with recreational alcohol use meaning that, since a legal substance is far more dangerous than an illegal …show more content…
Henry I. Miller of the Hoover Institution pointed out the Institute of Medicine’s report on cannabis that had seen “smoked plant material [as] a crude drug delivery system that exposes patients to a significant number of harmful substances” with a basic translation as marijuana being the first and least harmful drug, that would lead a drug user to addiction (Miller, 49). Marijuana has the ability to give its user a high or kick that creates either a calm and happy effect or a crazy, unstable effect that the user usually favors over their normal, mentally stable state. However, if smoked enough, the effect becomes less powerful and intoxicating for the user, causing them to crave a high even stronger. This would lead a marijuana user to stronger drugs such heroine, oxycontin, cocaine, or meth that cause a stronger high at a far greater risk. This leads people to believe that marijuana is an indirect cause for addiction to drugs such as these. But if cannabis is only to be used for medical reasons, the government can limit the amount a patient can consume which would lead to less of an immunization to the high and would no longer cause the user to crave a stronger drug. This is a method that has been used in many states in the United States. Directly after the IOM’s statement of the