Why is it Illegal to Smoke Weed?

Alcohol has caused countless deaths in countless ways- through violence, accidents involving heavy machinery and other dangerous objects, as well as through sheer overdrinking.  People who drink too much have and continue to die through falls, or falling down drunk, or falling down in the snow and freezing to death.  It is a substance that has caused an abundance of birth defects, ruined livers and health, and ruined lives.  Even when an alcoholic does not die, their destructive drinking causes untold pain for those around them, from spouses to parents to children. 
Marijuana, on the other hand, has no such record.  And yet, in many places in the United States as well as around the world, marijuana has been declared an illegal substance and its use can bring on heavy fines, incarceration, and even death in some countries!  This, for a substance which, besides being dried, is completely natural!  This, for a substance that is almost universally upheld as one that promotes peace, or at the very worst, makes people "unmotivated".  I say a person sitting on their ass smoking weed is preferable to someone killing people through drunk driving. 

We need to do what we can to get marijuana laws changed to reflect the reality of this plant- that it is something that has far more potential to help than to harm.  Artists cite its properties as an herbal ally which can stimulate creativity.  Hemp's properties as a pain reliever and a its effectivness of minimizing many other forms of suffering is also recognized, even in formal Western medicine, which traditionally has been rather closed to possibilities for healing from other traditions and modalities.  The former U.S. Surgeon General Jocelyn Elders has even made the statement that marijuana can relieve many types of pain, nausea, vomiting, and other symptoms caused by cancer, AIDS, multiple sclerosis, and other diseases.  Not only that, but she also added that marijuana can do so "remarkably safely", much more so than commonly used prescription medicines, which are far more toxic!  A study done by Medical Marijuana ProCon  (http://medicalmarijuana.procon.org) in which they compared deaths attributed to marijuana vs. 17 FDA-approved drugs (from the period of 1997-2005) found ZERO deaths in which marijuana was the primary suspect of death, and 10,008 deaths in which the primary suspect was the FDA-approved drug!  This study was done using the FDA's own records. 

Just in case this article seems one-sided, let's take a look at some of the reasons people are opposed to legalizing or decriminalizing marijuana. They claim marijuana is addictive, or a gateway drug. While it is true that many a person (mostly college students) are psychologically addicted to marijuana, let it be known that giving up marijuana does not yield clearly defined withdrawal symptoms, which differs from alcohol and tobacco, not to mention other drugs (including caffeine!) where there are definite and clear withdrawal symptoms. Not to say it doesn't happen- I personally know of at least one case in which a person who stopped smoking reported he would vomit slightly if he didn't get his daily does. But again, compare this to other drugs and you will see that marijuana is benign compared to the often horrific process of coming off of other substances. I personally don't see how you can justify keeping marijuana so illegal with this reasoning.

As for the "gateway drug" argument, the evidence is inconclusive. I would say that people who try pot and move on to other drugs probably would have done so anyway. I personally do not know pot smokers who get into the really nasty stuff. There are many factors in why a person makes the choices they do, it seems neither fair nor logical to blame hard drug use on marijuana, especially when the evidence is less than compelling.

Personally, I really believe pot has more potential for good than the other way around. Certainly, there are people wasting their lives smoking pot all day and watching TV. That's a shame, but why would you just blame the pot? Might it not have something to do with the person? Do we have to keep marijuana illegal because of them? Don't you think it's highly possible that without marijuana, they'd just be doing the same thing minus the smoking, like so many other sober (or drunk on alcohol) couch potatoes? What about all the happy, healthy, creative people who use pot once in a while, or even all the time, and live what would be considered healthy, normal lives? When police caught Michael Phelps smoking weed, was that the beginning of the long downward spiral into hard drugs and/or obesity for the greatest Olympic swimmer the world has known? That being said, I do personally think that using less, or no marijuana in general is a good thing. I can't understand when people who say "All I do is smoke weed", but I don't blame the weed for this. These people can be said to be addicted, for sure, but we have sex addicts too- are we going to outlaw that next? Such people just need help to quit smoking weed, and they are a minority.

Even if it is used inappropriately at times to manage stress and escape from reality (why not exercise instead?), consider the effects of marijuana vs. some other substance that could be used for the same purpose, such as alcohol, cocaine, heroin, or even off-the-shelf products like cough syrup!  Whereas these hard drugs and prescription medicine are definitely physically addictive and can have horrendous effects on the mind and health, this does not seem to be the case for marijuana.  

Here is a very brief list of just some of the individuals and organizations who support either the legalization of, or the decriminalization and rescheduling of marijunana:

- The American College of Physicians

- Judge Francis L. Young, DEA Administrative Law Judge

- Lester Grinspoon, MD, Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry,
Harvard Medical School

- Donald Abrams, MD

-Consumer Reports, May 1997 editorial

- Gregory T. Carter, MD, Co-director, MDA/ALS Center,
University of Washington Medical Center
Muscular Dystrophy Association

Not only is marijuana something that humans enjoy using recreationally, but it is something that has a large variety of industrial uses as well. Add to this the fact that it is relatively easy to grow, can be grown on more types of soil with less fertilizers needed than cotton, and requires only about 120 days to maturity, and you have to really wonder why we are not making much better use of this resource.  Here are a few examples of the literally hundreds (thousands?) of applications for hemp:

-Making paper (saves trees),

-Textiles and clothing: hemp is a great replacement for cotton due to the intensive labor that goes into producing this warm-weather crop. Hemp can be grown in a wider range of climates, offers yields that are both greater and more efficient, and does not need the heavy spraying of pesticides that cotton requires. It is also stronger and more resilient than cotton

-Cord/rope: hemp is again stronger than cotton and more eco-friendly to produce than cotton.

-Food: hemp oil, made from hemp seeds, is high in nutrients and a great food for both humans and animals. It also contains omega-3 fatty acids, which are super beneficial to health and can be used in a wide range of products. Again, this from a renewable resource (in contrast to fish, which are dwindling in numbers all over the world due to overfishing).

There's a lot more to discuss in regards to the general populace's attitudes regarding marijuana, and that is beyond the scope of any one hub.  Get out there and dig into the many books, websites, and people who are resources on this much maligned but helpful plant.  I haven't even touched on the potential for legal marijuana to spawn new industries and reform our heinous prison system.  Get educated and help to change our misguided laws against this gift from nature!  We need everyone to become aware of the real benefits of this plant, then we can legalize it and THEN think about ways to minimize the possible (small) negatives of something that otherwise offers a world of good.