Public Policy Concerns Of Legalizing Marijuana

Marijuana or weed, pot, bud, chronic, dank, dope, dro, endo, ganja, grass, green, herb, hippie lettuce, indo, loud, Mary Jane, reefer, Reggie is a mixture of flowers from the plant Cannabis Sativa. Marijuana and the quest for legalization has been a hot-button issue for several years now. Many people claim different things about Marijuana: is it beneficial? Is it a gate-way drug? Do the benefits outweigh the risks? Is it better or worse for you than alcohol or tobacco? Does it make you violent? Regardless of what one might think about Marijuana, it is still something that many Americans are concerning themselves with and it has slowly become the topic of the moment. This essay will examine the public policy concerns of legalizing something

Public policy, as defined by Thomas Birkland, is, “…a statement by government—at whatever level, in whatever form—of what it intends to do about a public problem.” These governmental statements can be found in things such as, “the Constitution, statutes, regulation, case law, agency or leadership decisions,” and even a lack of statements can be a policy statement. Issues in drug policy relating to marijuana differ, but most of the time include issues like whether it is actually beneficial medically, the classification of it as a schedule one substance, mandatory minimum sentences, recreational vs. medicinal. Marijuana and drug policy overlap into areas like public health policy, criminal justice policy, and environmental policy. This policy on marijuana is important to study because marijuana has many health benefits related to using it properly and it also important to study because police make almost 700,000 arrests related to marijuana violations a year, according to the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation. So many argue about the medicinal benefits of marijuana and also the amount of arrests per year. Increasingly, marijuana and drug policy reform has become a hot topic and over the past few years, many states have either legalized medical marijuana and some have even legalized recreational marijuana

Although Prohibition was to make something that was perfectly legal at the time illegal and the current marijuana movement wants to something that is illegal and make it legal, there are still valuable connections to be made between the two. Lessons from Prohibition can also hint at the future of policy on marijuana. Prohibition, like the current marijuana movement, started off in the states with 18 southern and Midwestern states proposing or passing legislation against alcohol by 1915. Like the marijuana movement, Prohibition began in the states and gained momentum before coming into the national spotlight as an issue of importance. However, unlike Prohibition, the marijuana movement has always been between the national spotlight and the local-state-level spotlight. So the issue of marijuana was first a national one with the classification of marijuana as an illegal substance and slowly turned into a state-level one with the individual states each having their own policies about marijuana. Eventually Congress passed the 18th amendment which prohibited the sale and manufacturing of alcohol with the amendment going into effect in 1920. Again, while the marijuana movement is trying to take something that is illegal make it legal for consumption while Prohibition was taking something legal and making