Marijuana Legalization Analysis

Over the decades, an intriguing and contemptuous debate over whether to legalize marijuana has expanded to beyond the realm of recreational users. Having once seemed a topic solely for hippie driven youth, this topic has broadened to affect people of all ages and social economic groups in our American society. From the playgrounds of middle school students to the offices of business executives, marijuana has become the most widely used illegal drug in the United States. Via Hayoung Terra Yim describes the reasons she feels the legalization of marijuana is important in her article, "Why Young People Should Care About Marijuana Legalization". As with any viewpoint, there is always an opposing side. Natalie Rivera discusses some of the fundamental reasons as to why the legalization of

marijuana would be a bad idea and how legalizing it would ruin our states in her article, "Why Marijuana Should Not Be Legalized".

History has taught us, that as we evolve as a civilization, our way of thinking changes and in response to that we must adapt. We must change our outlooks, our views, our prejudices, our preconceptions and our ignorances. We have become a more critical thinking society and have acquired many advancements that our fore fathers never dreamed possible. Part of being a United States citizen, is taking an active role and participating in civic responsibilities. One of these responsibilities, I believe is having either an obligation to influence our government to change the laws that no longer represent the views or values that we, as a people, believe in or we have an obligation to defend, protect and stand by those freedoms and laws that we feel empower who we are as citizens. As we evolve, so does our way of thinking and sometimes adaptations need to made in order to accommodate for the changes in our way of thinking. However, there are other times when there is no room to deviate from the core freedoms and rights granted to us by our government. It is important to preserve or fight to change the standards of all our laws, which is essential for our democratic

society to survive. Neither one of these articles, however, touched on what would happen during a transition period if marijuana was legalized. Would the transition period of legalization be smooth and beneficial to society or would the legalizing marijuana contribute to more chaos, crime and drug use? I think the transition period of legalization would be smooth, uneventful and would help lessen crime, chaos and drug use in America.
Creation of jobs, increased tax revenues, more agricultural products, medical benefits and individual rights are the main benefits Hayoung Terra Yim focuses on in her article. The collection of taxes and the amount of money that can be made is the greatest benefit according to Yim. Although, Yim confirms she has a personal investment in marijuana being legalized because she is a consistent recreational user, she thinks it would benefit all of the American public. This hearty, inexpensive plant, also known as cannabis, has been used to treat a variety of medical conditions. Some of these conditions are: PTSD, fibromyalgia, stress and pain. Believing that marijuana was only criminalized because of the personal agenda of a 1930's politician (Yim), Yim wants the law reevaluated. I agree with her in that the government should not have the right to ban adults from making free will, personal choices that hurt no one other than themselves. It has been proven that marijuana does have effect memory loss and learning functions over a prolonged use of time (Abuse, 2017). Marijuana does have some