Marijuana, weed, cannabis, the devil’s lettuce, or whatever you may want to call it, has been a controversial topic for almost a century. The marijuana debate still continues today on whether it should be legal, medically or recreationally. Many states are making progress on legalizing it, while some states are doing their best to completely banish it. Marijuana should be legal because current marijuana laws are unjust, the laws that are in place now are too harsh, and it has lots of health benefits.
A lot of people think that cannabis is a gateway drug and that it’s harmful. It has never been recorded to date that there has ever been an overdose from marijuana and it has been proven that it’s a lot safer and less addictive than more harmful, easier to get drugs.
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In the 1930s, there was an anti-marijuana advocate named Harry Anslinger. He was the first commissioner of the FBN (Federal Bureau of Narcotics). Anslinger was a very strong backer of the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937; an act that banned the sale and possession of marijuana. He said that smoking marijuana caused “insanity and [violence]” and that people were becoming “slaves to the narcotic” (Walsh). Despite a huge lack in scientific proof for all these claims, he kept pushing his agenda and getting attention as well as followers. A strong part of Anslinger’s campaign against marijuana was his “race” argument. He said that latinos and african-americans were the main users of marijuana; and he correlated the “satanic” music the african-americans were making to the marijuana that they were smoking. Anslinger stated that marijuana promoted “interracial relationships” as well as “interracial mixing”. He used the term “marijuana” instead of “cannabis” because he thought it sounded mexican, and would be associated with mexican