Persuasive Essay On Legalizing Marijuana

Thus we conclude that no adequate justification for the state’s intrusion into the citizen’s right to privacy by its prohibition of marijuana by an adult for personal consumption in the home has been shown…The state must demonstrate a need based on proof that the public health or welfare will in fact suffer if the controls are not applied. (qtd. in Linder)
In 1975, the Alaskan Supreme Court ruled in favor of citizens’ rights to use and possess a small amount of marijuana within the privacy of their own homes. This was not the first word in the debate on marijuana legalization, and although the ruling was overruled in a 1990 ballot initiative, the language used to justify the Supreme Court’s decision takes a definitive stance on recreational drug use and the people’s inherent right to privacy. Regardless of the laws, statues, and

This is an exceptionally complex issue to debate. At what point can it be argued that interpersonal issues arising around marijuana users are a result of the cannabis rather than the consumer? The line is wide, grey, and largely out of focus, so rather than attempt to reconcile subjective data, it is far easier to – as is customary within the realm of legal matters – quantify matters by means of a precedent. In this case, the most relevant precursor to the debate surrounding marijuana legalization is inarguably the continued legalization of alcohol.
The numbers speak for themselves. For all reported violent crimes in 2008, victims perceived that 19% of offenders had been under the influence of alcohol (Bureau of Justice Statistics), yet there are relatively no cases of marijuana induced crime in the same time frame. In fact, one study asserts that no definitive correlation between marijuana use and violence in adults has been established at all (Shorey et