Introduction
In the United States of America, the debate about whether recreational drugs should be legalized or not has been going on for decades. This debate is certainly no small matter, since it often sparks conflict between so many parties. As of September 2017, states in the western gulf such as California, Oregon, and Washington have legalized both recreational and medical marijuana, making six states in total fully supportive of the use of marijuana, sixteen states only legalizing for medical use, and the rest of the US still hasn’t had a clear law regarding the use of marijuana (State marijuana laws in 2017 map, 2017). This paper will emphasize the support of legalizing marijuana as a recreational drug. The use of marijuana as a recreational drug should be legalized because of three important reasons. The first reason why the use of marijuana as a recreational drug should be legalized is because marijuana use does not have a dangerous side effect compared to other substance such as tobacco and alcohol. Secondly, the criminalization of marijuana as a recreational
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If marijuana is taxed as much as tobacco, $500 million can be produced to federal taxes per year (Ekins & Henchman, 2016). In Colorado alone, a very high increase as high as 57.2% in marijuana taxes from 2015 to 2017 fiscal year. As of January, Colorado has successfully collected $119 million in taxes, much higher than the tax collected from alcohol which only produced $38 million. Among these marijuana tax revenue, the state has been able to put $16 million for the Affordable Housing Grants and Loans (Borchardt, 2017). If only the government focuses on the budget allocations and taxation, the nation would gain more economic benefit than they already have rather than spending billions for a criminal justice system which has shown little to no