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Persuasive Essay On Legalizing Marijuana

1054 Words5 Pages

Thesis: Canada’s federal government should legalize marijuana as the high cost of it being criminalized is unjustifiable, it has been successfully proven to help individuals with medical conditions, and would retard drug related crimes and violence.
Marijuana has been proven to be helpful to individuals suffering from health issues and side effects of diseases. The recreational marijuana industry is less dangerous to the public than the alcohol and tobacco industry combined.
Health courses in middle schools, public service announcements, and parental lectures often succumb to the fallacy of equating marijuana with cocaine and other street drugs. However, marijuana is no more dangerous than other things we readily put in our bodies like processed …show more content…

Drug related crimes emerge from “turf wars” between rival suppliers and disagreements between buyers and sellers (Riley 1998). The economic opportunities of illegal cannabis black markets diverts youth from education and schooling to crime, which is a hard cycle to break (Riley 1998). The legalization of cannabis would be beneficial to the safety of young adults. By allowing for legal and safe distribution and regulation of marijuana, young adults have less access to more harmful and illegal drugs. With the legalization of pot comes less drug related crimes and incidents occurring because of monetary issues, gang violence, and lack of dangerous conditions where illegal drugs are exchanged. Marijuana distribution is similar to organ donations in this way – if the state made it mandatory, the organ black market would collapse. However, legalizing marijuana means enforcing an appropriate age restriction coupled with consumption limits, just as the government enforces rules and regulations for the distribution of alcohol and cigarettes to minors and young adults. Over the past 40 years, the effort to change the drug policy has been unsuccessful and as a result, these policies have created an expanding, unregulated, and unsafe drug market lacking human rights. In addition, the law enforcement approach to drug use is also associated with growing prison populations and stigma surrounding those who use

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