Legalize It

When I woke up this morning at 8:30 and strolled into class for the first time in oh I don't know, let's say a week, I had no idea I would be debating whether or not marijuana should be legalized. In my opinion yes marijuana should definitely be legal. There is an easy argument that weed is no more harmful than alcohol, but I don’t know how many of you know about the drug Salvia. Well this is a drug that is legal and sold at most head shops around Canada and some states in the US. I will admit I am a casual user of marijuana (I know that will come as a shock to most of you) and once I found out about this LEGAL substance being sold at shops I was regularly at, such as BOBS headquarters, I thought I would see what all the hype was about. So one night a friend and I tried this legal drug and let me tell you after experiencing what Salvia can do, I cannot understand how it’s legal and marijuana isn’t. Salvia has been compared to acid and people who have taken Salvia often experience fear and terror and if you don’t believe me look up some of the Salvia users on You Tube.

Every year thousands of people die from alcohol related accidents and I have yet to hear of anyone “overdosing” on weed. Every party I have gone to you see someone drooling and barley being able to stand because of how drunk they are. All pot smokers have to worry about is getting a little red-eyed; weed doesn’t make you into staggering idiot like alcohol can do to most people.

People say that weed should be illegal because it is harmful to your health. How is marijuana any more harmful than drinking or smoking? The answer is it’s not and there are other ways of consuming marijuana so that you can limit the amount of toxic chemicals you inhale. One way of do this is by cooking marijuana into cakes, brownies or butter, this way you’re not smoking the plant. Another way which has been said to have better results is a vaporizer. A vaporizer heats the weed up to 210 °C which will turn the active ingredients into a gas. Studies have shown that this method lowers the amount of tar and carbon monoxide inhaled compared to smoking marijuana. There are safer ways to inhale weed besides having to smoke it, so I think the whole it’s harmful to your health argument is bullshit.

These are some of the reasons I believe it should be legalized, but whether or not the government will do a good job producing and selling marijuana is a question for another day.