The Cannabinoid Debate

The upward trend of marijuana use and approval is evident as more and more states opt to have medical and recreational use of marijuana. This doesn’t come as a surprise, as marijuana has only recently become outlawed. In the 1970’s under Nixon’s Administration, the war on drugs put a permanent ban on the plant. The Controlled Substance Act (https://www.drugs.com/csa-schedule.html) placed marijuana as a schedule 1 drug classifying it as highly addictive, and with no medicinal value.  This also meant that researchers would be unable to conduct any studies on the possible uses of medicinal marijuana. Prior to the CSA, marijuana was taxed under the Marihuana Tax act of 1937. This tax made marijuana widely available with only a small price influx to deal with. Backtrack to 1937 and years before and marijuana was seen as a plant much like tobacco and oregano.

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 This would also have a trickle down effect as there would be less people behind bars paying time for an outdated offence.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.