Legalizing Marijuana Argumentative Analysis

Today, Americans are more in favor of legalizing marijuana than criminalizing it. 2013 was a successful year for marijuana legalization. Colorado and Washington both passed laws to make it legal for recreational use and now the majority of Americans agree that it should be decriminalized. Some states in the America have legalized recreational use of marijuana. They are Colorado, Washington, Oregon, Alaska, and also Washington D.C. The purpose of this position paper is to explain why marijuana should be legalized. Since the recreational use of marijuana has been legalized crime rates have fallen significantly, tax revenue has increased, and the public understanding and research of marijuana has increased. Colorado and Washington became

This was a big change from 1969 where only 12% of Americans said yes to legalization. (Swift) According to an article by MSNBC by Erin Delmore, the Mendocio County California, Tom Allman warned people that there would be an increase in crime in Colorado because of the legalization of marijuana. However, a new report says that even after the new law, Colorado’s violent and property crime rates are actually falling. Data from the Denver Police says that violent crime, including homicide, sexual assault, and robberies fell by 6.9 percent in the first quarter of 2014, compared to the same period in 2013, and property crime, including burglary, larceny and auto theft dropped by 11.1 percent. (Delmore) Many people have debated about whether or not legalizing the recreational use of marijuana would

In Potential Tax Revenue from a regulated marijuana market: A Meaningful Revenue Source, Caputo and Ostrom say that since the 1960’s people have become more and more interested in this product. They go on to say that in 1992, marijuana had become the nations leading cash crop. Even back then marijuana was making big money. A chart provided by Colorado Department of Revenue, Office of Research and Analysis shows how much money in sate tax revenue Colorado made from marijuana sales from January 1 to May 31, 2014. Just in the month of January they made $2,000,000 in taxes. In 2014, Colorado expected $578.1 million a year both wholesale and recreational sales put together to yield $67 million in tax revenue. (Legislative Council of the Colorado General Assembly) Also, some of the sales tax would go to school construction and another portion of the money would go towards regulation. (The Legalization of Marijuana in Colorado) In 2014, Colorado collected about $63 million in marijuana taxes. Lots of this money is being used for drug abuse education, research and substance abuse treatment. Even though many people are not in favor of this new law, hopefully they can be happy that the tax money being made from marijuana sales is going toward good things like the programs mentioned in the above paragraph. Not only is this good for revenue