Growing up, we were all taught to stay away from illicit drugs, such as marijuana, because they could harm both your physical and mental health. Well, we were taught wrong. Weather it be uneducation or just pure ignorance, these drugs can, in fact, can increase your overall quality of life, and we as a country have yet to accept that. Especially considering if marijuana was indeed legal, all of the marijuana would be regulated and sold by the government, making the drug even safer. It is an outrage how we can sit and watch benefits of a relatively safe drug fly out the window. Recreational marijuana should be legal because the anti-marijuana campaign is expensive, the number of incarcerated prisoners for a marijuana offence is too high, the …show more content…
The government spends millions of dollars every year providing anti-marijuana statements and advertisements, including education in private and public schools. According to Ethan Nadelmann, “Congress gives the DEA half a billion dollars a year to eradicate marijuana… 98 percent of the confiscated was hemp” (Nadelmann 2). Even when we do spend a great sum of money on enforcing marijuana, the majority of the confiscated “marijuana” turned out to be hemp. So indeed, it is not just a matter of the cost, it is too education about the drug and how to regulate it. When it comes to education about the drug, “75 percent of schools teach that hemp is marijuana” (Nadelmann 3). Marijuana and hemp are two different things. Marijuana has THC, the drug that provides the feeling of being “high”. Hemp is legal to own if you have a license to grow it, and it is just the plant without any THC in it. Hemp, or Cannabis sativa “... is a low-maintenance crop that can be used in paper, clothing, rope, and even cars.” (“ Legalize it!” 2). If we can’t even educate our children properly, then how are we supposed to be able to keep the drug under control? We