Good Ol' Mary Jane

Marry Jane never hurt nobody. That is, she never killed anyone herself. All joking aside drugs are a very serious matter. That is why I can't see any reason to continue prohibiting the use of marijuana. The money would be better spent elsewhere. I could not find one case of cannabis induced death no matter how hard I looked. The con side essay uses the ambiguous number of 100,000 visits to the emergency room as a call for concern. How many people are rushed to the hospital every year due to alcohol consumption? While marijuana has never been linked to a drug induced death, alcohol kills over 80,000 people a year and tobacco kills nearly a cool half million. The real reason it is illegal has nothing to do with the drug's effects on people. If that were the case alcohol and tobacco would also be illegal. Let's not forget that caffeine is a drug too.
In border states marijuana was used as a reason to round up immigrants. Many industries found that if they did not have to compete with hemp products they could carve out a bigger slice of the market. Hemp is a source of many products like paper, rope, alternative fuel, clothes, and medicine. If you dig a little deeper you can find the political motivations behind almost anything.
In school we were always taught about how Prohibition was America's grand experiment. I do not remember one text book mention how oil companies lobbied to get alcohol illegalized. At the time a German inventor named Rudolf Diesel invented the Diesel Engine, which still runs today. That engine used vegetable oil or ethanol (alcohol) for fuel. Henry Ford built his first Model-T cars using this engine design and meant for them to run on ethanol. Mainly because you can derive alcohol from agricultural waste products, and it was cheaper than vegetable oil. Standard Oil and the other Giants of the industry bound together to make alcohol illegal to force Ford's hand to switch to an engine that would run on their product. This new product they cleverly named “diesel fuel.” Shortly after Ford relented and made the change, prohibition on alcohol was lifted. Oddly enough one of the other alternatives Ford explored was fuel from hemp seed oil.
Marijuana was demonized for various political reasons. The end result is that thousands of Americans are jailed every year for something some of our founding fathers grew and smoked. I do not think marijuana should be legal so I can go roll a fatty. In my mind there is no point in enforcing a law that can never truly be enforced. Millions of Americans admit to smoking the icky sticky green. If they really want it they will get it. There is also the forbidden fruit factor. How many kids do something with the only intention being to do what they were told not to? I also believe there is no basis for the belief that marijuana is the “gateway drug.” I have never met anyone who did not smoke tobacco or drink alcohol before they tried marijuana. That does not mean someone like that is not out there, but I think it is fair to say they are a small percentage of the American population.
Lastly, everyone knows there is a vote coming up on November 2nd for the legalization of marijuana for personal use in California. Obviously both sides of the debate have come forward to zealously preach their point of view. The most interesting point of view I have heard comes out of the northern part of California. In the areas already known for marijuana cultivation, the growers do not want it to be legal because they believe it will hurt their business. I can not think of a more political and hypocritical point in case for why things are the way they are. I will leave you with a quote from Einstein, “Nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced.”