Just legalize it already. Everyone knows what I'm talking about before I even say it. WEED, grass, bud, flower, marijuana. That little funky smelling green plant. And schedule 1 drug that can get you sent to jail for a long time. Since 1970 when the controlled substances act took effect criminalizing most recreational drugs including marijuana, there have been 12 million marijuana related arrests since then. More people than all violent crimes put together. 88% of such arrests are for possession not manufacture or distribution.
In recent years there has been serious growth in science related to medical marijuana. Before criminalization it had been used for thousands of years in medical and spiritual practices. But for the purpose of this presentation I will be debating legalization for recreational use. Currently there are 9 states that have legalized marijuana for recreational and medical use. There are 13 states that have removed the possibility of jail time for possession of small amounts of marijuana. Marijuana is still illegal under federal law and state legalization is a grey area that the federal government has not acted upon. The Gallup polling organization reported that in 2017 64% of Americans support legalization of marijuana.
The majority of policy change has been due to advocacy organizations that push government officials and elected representatives to support legalization. One such non-profit organization is the Marijuana Policy Project. It was founded in D.C in 1995 and is the largest organization dedicated to the legalization of marijuana. They claim to be responsible for changing most state level marijuana reforms since 2000. Their vision statement is: “MPP and MPP Foundation envision a nation where marijuana is legally regulated similarly to alcohol, marijuana education is honest and realistic, and treatment for problem marijuana users is non-coercive and geared toward reducing harm.” They have worked very hard towards this goal. They have a staff of 30 people as well as volunteers and lobbyists on retainer.
I chose this issue because I believe the criminalization of marijuana is one of the biggest crimes our government has committed. The ignorant criminalization of a substance that is safer than alcohol and tobacco which are both legal and combined kill over 500,000 Americans a year. There has not been a single instance of someone dying from marijuana. There are over 14,000 people in state and federal prison on marijuana related charges not including county jails. Minorities specifically black people are disproportionately targeted by police and even though marijuana use is about the same between black and white people, black people are 3.73 times more likely to be arrested than white people.
I chose this organization because I believe that they will make the most impact. Marijuana legalization is different from most of the issues that we have discussed in class. Legalization deals with government policy and activism is directed towards government officials. The goal is to change state and federal law. For this I believe that a large organization is best because they have considerable resources and connections that are necessary to sway politicians.
The Marijuana Policy Project led lobbying campaigns and worked towards the ballot initiatives that legalized marijuana in Colorado, Alaska, Maine, Massachusetts, Nevada and California. It also worked on the campaign that legalized marijuana legislatively in Vermont. It is working on legalization efforts in 8 other states; as well as decriminalization in several states. They hold events and run awareness campaigns. Their website and blog monitors and reports state and federal policy and legalization events throughout the country.
For the past almost 50 years marijuana has been illegal. Despite the fact that other much more dangerous substances are legal like alcohol and tobacco. The Congressional Research Service estimated that completely legalizing marijuana will generate 6.8 billion dollars from taxes alone. States will also no longer have to pay for enforcement, in 2006 California saved 857 million dollars after decriminalization. States like Washington and Colorado have reported economic growth and increased jobs. All these good reasons as well as the only reason that should matter in a democracy: the majority of the the population(64%) are in favor of legalization. Organizations like the Marijuana Policy Project push the government to doing what they need to do and head towards the decriminalization and the regulation of weed similar to alcohol.
Their website is amazing and has tons of information if you are interested: www.mpp.org
Hi Morgan,
ReplyDeleteYour blog post was very enjoyable to read. I liked that you brought a different issue area to our class’s attention and this one is very interesting to me, especially one aspect of your post. The criminalization of marijuana possession and other drugs has significantly changed our society and the rates of incarceration in the United States. I agree with you that the government has ignorantly criminalized marijuana, especially with Nixon’s declaration of the “war on drugs” in the 1960s. His campaign was designed specifically to target specific groups of people he saw as a threat to the government, and often drugs were used as a means of punishing these threats. In the 1980s, under the Regan administration, drug policies were implemented to continue this “war.” With the implementation of harsh laws, later including mandatory sentences, incarceration rates dramatically increased. In 1971, the number of people imprisoned in the United States was about 200,000. Last year, there were over 2 million Americans in federal, state, and local prisons; we are the country with the highest rates in the world. The number of people arrested for marijuana violations in 2016 was 653,249. I do not see this as a coincidence, as more than half of the people arrested for drug offenses were either African American or Latino, even though the usage rates between whites and minorities are very similar. Moreover, especially with the privatization of prisons and the prison-industrial complex in our country, it has made the legalization of marijuana a political argument. The Marijuana Policy Project seems like an interesting organization that woks to influence policy to legalize marijuana. The website provides a lot of information and statistics about the issue of marijuana and criminal justice and why it is an important issue in our society. After doing some research I came across the Drug Policy Alliance. It is a non-profit that works to help end the “war on drugs” and an aspect of their mission statement is to help advance policies that shift the current harsh drug laws that incarcerate many Americans, similar to that of MPP The website has a lot of information about the history of the “war on drugs,” facts about different types of drugs and the criminal justice, and different types of reform that could help target this issue. Here’s the link: http://www.drugpolicy.org . Thank you for sharing about this organization and bringing attention to a huge issue in our country: mass incarceration.
http://www.drugpolicy.org/issues/brief-history-drug-war
http://www.drugpolicy.org/issues/drug-war-statistics
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/opinion-la/la-oew-gutwillig7-2009sep07-story.html
Hey Morgan,
ReplyDeleteI'm very glad that you brought this issue up because it has been an issue I've been very interested in recent years as well. Katherine brings up a great point about Nixon's "War on Drugs." If you have the time, I would advise you listen to some of his recordings during his presidency and how he even admitted that his anti-marijuana stance was directed towards minorities. The racial difference in marijuana arrests is staggering. Also, what's even worse is that marijuana's category 1 status means that it is incredibly difficult to get grants to research it. The government outlawed marijuana and does not even allow it to be studied. I think the 1st step towards legalization is allowing science to properly research it to show what we have all known for years: that marijuana is not a schedule 1 drug. Like you said, the outlawing of marijuana has more to do with mass incarceration of minorities than the safety of the American public. I have an optimistic view that we will see this change in our lifetime. I appreciate you speaking about an issue that you are passionate about and that needs to be addressed.
Hi Morgan,
ReplyDeleteI am really happy you brought this topic to light as we have not mentioned anything like it. However, I also believe it is a big issue that needs to be resolved. The stigma surrounding marijuana is truly absurd and is the main reason people do not want it to be legalized. Truthfully, as you stated, marijuana is much safer than alcohol and many other drugs people can easily and legally get access to. Specifically, as you are advocating for the legalization of recreational use, I believe this is a great idea because it improves accessibility to medicinal marijuana as well. Over the winter break I went to Colorado, where as you mentioned in the post, weed is legalized. Only people 21 and over are able to enter a dispensary, but my sister and her fiancé went into one and described how they are much more than just a store full of joints and edibles. They have a wide variety of medicinal items to treat pain that actually work and would do no harm to the consumer. My sister was able to buy a therapeutic lotion containing THC that relieved her chronic neck pain she has from nursing. Because of this lotion, for those five days in Colorado she was pain-free, until she had to throw the lotion out before boarding our flight back to New York. Simple solutions like this would be easily accessible to people if marijuana was just legalized in the United States.
Also, people have much more severe pain that marijuana can alleviate, but acquiring a medical marijuana license is a long process with many guidelines and applications. I am from New Jersey so I am taking the guidelines from their program, but getting a license is not an easy task. Your illness has to be a specific medical condition that does not respond to conventional therapy. Then, even if you are eligible to receive a license you have to fill out an application form, pay $200, wait for your application to be processed(about 45 days), and every year pay $20 to renew this license. But, after my knee surgery, I was prescribed a highly addictive drug, Percocet, which is a leading cause of the heroin epidemic, which kills thousands of people every year just in the United States(source, source). I don’t know about you guys, but this fact seems much more troubling to me than people smoking weed for fun, which Morgan stated, “there has not been a single instance of someone dying from”. However, even though it is very easy for people to acquire these very harmful substances that often lead to addiction of much more dangerous drugs, people who are in need of medical marijuana have to jump through multiple hoops just to relieve pain caused by chronic illnesses. My friend’s father recently passed from GI cancer, which is extremely painful and, in his case, the pain was not relieved by conventional, prescription drugs. But, one day he found out that marijuana helped relieved inflammation and could possibly help with the pain. His daughter illegally bought non-medicinal marijuana(which has lower CBD levels), but even with the less potent version of the drug he finally found a way to relieve the pain he was in. My friend wanted him to apply for a license but, he was in his last weeks of life and knew by the time he even got a license for possession of medical marijuana he would die. Therefore, the last few weeks of his life were mostly enduring the pain of the cancer growing inside of him, while his daughters tried to illegally purchase marijuana to help their father in anyway possible. My friend was risking jail time to help her father be pain-free during his last weeks of life, while people who complain enough to their doctor can be prescribed highly addictive, extremely dangerous drugs for acute pain. It simply makes no logical sense for this to be the case.
I feel like the main reason why people are against legalizing marijuana is due to the stigma surrounding it. When most people hear the word weed, the first thing that pops into their head is a stoner who does nothing with their life except smoke(a.k.a. Seth Rogen in every movie), but that is just because our society has wrongfully classified weed as a schedule 1 drug. So I think people need to start asking themselves- is their fear of legalizing marijuana based on facts or a preconceived notion that anyone who smokes weed will become Marlon Wayans’ character in Scary Movie? Just look at Colorado since they legalized weed-18,000 jobs were created, there has been 60% fewer homicides in Denver, millions of dollars are being saved on enforcement costs, and $2.4 billion have been generated. People need to stop letting their fears get in the way of the fact that marijuana is not a scary and deathly drug. In fact, it has many beneficial qualities and is a much safer alternative than many man-made substances that people ingest everyday. I totally support this organization and to quote Seth Rogen, “If marijuana is not legal within the next five years...I have no faith left in humanity, period.”
ReplyDeletehttp://www.nj.gov/health/medicalmarijuana/documents/proposed_rules.pdf
https://www.voanews.com/a/legal-marijuana-and-crime/3379448.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/10/27/the-marijuana-industry-created-over-18000-new-jobs-in-colorado-last-year/?utm_term=.18f14f759da9
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ReplyDeleteTo add on to what everyone else is saying, I would also like to mention all the economic benefits that Marijuana provides. In 2015, Colorado totalted $996 million in totat sales and made $135 million on tax revenue. After recognizing this success, California, in 2016, totaled $15 billion in total sales and collected $3 billion in tax revenue. Massachusettes collected over $50 million in tax revenue. Sales in North America grew from 2015 to 2016 by 30%. Total sales increased to $6.7 billion and are expected to increase to over $20 billion by 2021. The economic benefits are undeniable and it would be surprising if Marijuana was not legal all over the country in the near future.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.investopedia.com/articles/insights/110916/economic-benefits-legalizing-weed.asp