Marijuana only recently became illegal and unlike other
legal substances like alcohol and tobacco there are no reported deaths over
this substance. There is also an overwhelming amount of evidence that CBD the
non-psychoactive ingredient in marijuana is know to have medicinal qualities. For
example, cannabidiol helps a range of problem from PTSD to epilepsy and
everything in between. There is a vast amount of support from groups of people
and their families who want to have access to this life changing medicine. Due
to location some people are unable to use this as a medicine and have to resort
to big pharma medicine, which more often than not has adverse side effects.
Legalizing marijuana would also mean that we could cut out
the middleman and would have the control to allocate the profits ourselves. This
would also have a trickle down effect as there would be less people behind bars
paying time for an outdated offence. There are large sums being dished out in
taxpayer money to keep these “criminals” behind bars. Getting caught with
marijuana also means that people everywhere have tainted records that mean
limited job opportunities and a less promising future.
I believe that the solution is to have a tax on the plant
much like the way that Colorado and Oregon have. With Colorado bringing in a
hefty sum of 198.5 million dollars in 2016 solely in in marijuana taxes,
it is no surprise why it is so beneficial to the economy. With all of the tax
money Colorado has been able to fund many sources with the largest chunk of 40
million going to the BEST fund, which is Building Excellent Schools Today.
There is also money being distributed to the Department of Public Health and Environment,
the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Education amongst many other
sources. This battle may take a while
but slowly states everywhere are reconsidering this outdated prohibition and I
hope by reading this you too can see the pros of this movement.