Marijuana is a hot topic of discussion recently. In the past 10 years states have been passing legislation that decriminalizes or even makes the usage and purchase of the drug legal. This has obviously led to a wave of criticism on everything from the dangerous side affects of the drug, to the impact it would have on the places its become decriminalized. I'm not saying that it shouldn't be talked about, but I believe that saying making it legal will increase usage is false and here's why.

First off let me start by talking about my experiences with marijuana. I am interested in this topic because I know a large number of people that use the drug, some even do it every day, so I am around it a lot. I am also from Maryland, a state that has decriminalized the drug. I also am a 15-minute drive from DC which is one of the few places in the United States that has made the use of the drug legal, so I am right in the center of the swift movement to make the drug legal. Seeing the recent events unfold it is clear to see that marijuana has already become apart of the culture in my area, but it has not led to an increase in usage with anyone that I know. I personally don't mind the drug when people are using it so I wouldn't say that doing this project affects me morally. I would say I'm qualified to write on this topic because I am around it on a daily basis and I have done plenty of research regarding this topic. 

One article I found pertaining to my topic Christopher Ingraham talked about how the legalization has affected the youth of America. The title "Why Legalizing Weed Is Unlikely To Turn Your Kid Into A Pothead" shows right off the bat the author's stance on the topic. The author cited a number of studies that showed that in the past 10 years in areas where legislation was passed, the usage of the drug actually decreased. The article says marijuana trends for occasional users had gone down from 1999 to 2009 and that "the study found similar held true when you look at monthly use and daily use" (Ingraham). Studies also showed that there was a dramatic spike in 13 and 14 year olds resenting the drug from 72% in 2002 to as much as 80% in 2006. This is big because the younger you start using a substance, the higher chance you will abuse the drug in the future. This article was mainly focusing on the youth aspect of legalization, which in my opinion is a very important thing to touch on. Teenagers are highly impressionable, but these studies show that the movement in legislation hasn't affected their views in a negative way which is huge because that is the age group that you really don't want to affect since they would be underage users. The author didn't have too much credibility on the subject aside from his research. This article was also quite bias because he had a hard stance on the subject and was arguing a point. Also, the data that he used to back up his point was decently out of date, with some of them dating back to the late 1990's to 2013.

My second article a team of investigative journalists including Anne M Shearer, Katie Campbell, Rilwan Balogun, and Matias Ocner reached on the medical marijuana situation in Hawaii. It talked about how its difficult being a patient there because while they do have medical marijuana patients, they have no dispensaries on any of the islands. They followed Teri Heede, a patient around for a while and they found that while she was still growing and cultivating the plants herself, "Heede's plants didn't always produce enough for her medical needs, so she bought pot illegally from a dealer behind the local McDonalds" (Shearer) . While this doesn't show directly how legalizing marijuana affects the population what this article does shows is that weather you legalize pot or not people are still going to smoke it. Mrs. Sugano was already a user before her medical card, thus proving further how people who are going to smoke pot are going to do it under any legal circumstances. This author was heavily credible because he went to Hawaii to investigate the case himself. This was a surprisingly unbiased article considering he went to the actual site of the problem and did his investigation first hand.

The final article that I wanted to use for this paper wasn't about the legalization, or weed at all; instead in this article Kelefa Sanneh chronicled the history of alcoholic prohibition in the 1920's. While the article wasn't even about weed, it showed a window into what happens when you make a widely used substance illegal. It said that when they made the sale and consumption of alcohol illegal, people actually did stop for a period of time, but after that period people just went to bootleggers to get their fix as it said "Rural bootleggers and speakeasies helped the country adapt ...  the change in circumstance helped convert American drinkers to gin" (Sanneh). Also it said even after it was made legal again there was no noticeable increase in consumption. Now let's look at this in the context of marijuana. Marijuana is sold illegally in places it isn't legal yet, grown by citizens just like the bootleggers during prohibition. Now if the legalization of weed goes anything like the re-legalization of alcohol went, we shouldn't see any dramatic increase in users or usage. This was mostly an unbiased source since it was written on history. This author is credible also because they got their information from sources in that time period. 

The next piece I found showed state-by-state statistics of marijuana usage in adults over the age of 18 in the past month. In this article statistics showed that states that have had a reputation for using the drug or legalizing it like California, Washington, Oregon, and Colorado were all in the top 10 in percentage of adults that have used the drug in the past month. This shows that indeed these states do use the drug more often than other states on average; however other states like Alaska, Rhode Island, and Vermont have not yet legalized it and they comprise the top three, higher than any state that has legalized the drug with Oregon being the closest coming in fourth. This shows that indeed the states that have legalized it or been a large player in the movement for legalization do use the drug a lot compared to other states, but it doesn't necessarily mean that they are the heaviest of users. Also it's not like these states stand out in any way statistically, considering the difference between the first and tenth place spot was only about 4%. 

My next article touches on marijuana in politics. In the article Kathleen Ferraiolo goes into what the political landscape of drugs mainly marijuana has been and how it has changed in the past few decades. Ferraiolo talks about how just a few decades ago marijuana legalization was such a little talked about subject that anyone that brought it up was not taken seriously, but now it is one of the hot subjects that every political candidate should have a stance on. This change in political activity shows that there is a decrease in moral objections to the use of the drug in today's society. This however does not mean that there is an increase in usage, if anything the increase in exposure can bring in more exposure to the drug's negative side-affects. 

In my next article Robin Pollini, Edward Romano, Mark Johnson, and John Lacey do research into the effects that the legalization of medical marijuana in California has had on drugged driving. These authors all did their own statistical investigation into the questioned change in drugged driving and it turns out that there has not been a significant change in drugged driving since the movement in legislation. This is big because one of the key arguments against legalizing marijuana is that it will lead to an increase in driving while under the influence of the drug, but this article proved that this was false. However, the article did explain how there was an increase in testing positive for cannabinoids in drivers with fatal injuries, but that is for another day.

My next article that I wanted to bring to the table talked about the effects of legalization covering everything from price change to usage. Mark Anderson and Daniel Rees cited data from the states that first legalized medical marijuana, and one statistic stood out to me in particular. Data shows that the DEA has had a significant difference in eradication efforts on marijuana plants than they do in states that have not legalized the medical use of the drug. This shows the positive affects of what legalizing the drug can do. The DEA has more of a push to eradicate the illegal growing operations in favor of the legal growing of the plant. Also, with the tax on marijuana being relatively high, they can use the money they receive from the legal purchase to fund the DEA's effort to get rid of the illegal operations.

In my next article Tony Newman and Tamar Todd look into the effects that legalizing weed has had in Washington state. They site a number of great things legalizing the drug has done for the state including a decrease in conviction for use of the drug outside the boundaries of the law, an increase in tax revenue, and a decrease in violent crime. It also said that there was not an increase in youth usage of marijuana since the passage of I-502, the bill that legalized the use of weed. 

This next piece is an informational website about marijuana. I looked specifically at the part of this website that talked about the overall usage across the country. This article cited a figure that showed change in usage in adolescents from 1999 to 2015 and it showed that while there were dips and rises in usage in 8th, 10th, and 12th graders it relatively stayed the same over the course of the study. This shows that legislative movement in the legalization of marijuana has not increased or decreased the usage in teens.

My next source was a TED Talk found on Youtube about how ingredients found in legally grown marijuana has helped kids as young as 5 years old. In his TED Talk in Boulder Colorado Josh Stanley talks about his experiences with trying to legalize the plant for its medical benefits. Josh was a key role in the movement to pass a bill in Colorado that legalized the medical use of the plant, not because he wanted to get high, but because he wanted to help terminally ill patients like the one he focuses on Charlotte Figgey. Charlotte is a 5 year old girl that was diagnosed early in her life with a rare condition known as Gervais syndrome which causes someone to have very violent seizures about every 20 minutes. What Stanley and his brothers did was they created a strain of marijuana that has very low THC content, and very high in the non-psychoactive compound CBD which is what gives marijuana most of its medical benefits. With the help of Josh Stanley that little girl Charlotte had her seizures go from 400 a week to 0-1 a week. This just shows the incredible benefits of this drug, and we are just seeing the tip of the iceberg. 

Every argument has two sides to it so I decided to take a look into the other side of what I'm arguing against in my last article. This last piece looked into how marijuana usage gets tied into abuse and dependence of the drug over all 50 states. The result of their findings was that indeed that states that legalized the drug had a higher percentage of people that abused the drug. Now personally I do not believe that the drug is physically addictive therefore I do not believe that someone has to rely on it, but the statistics speak for themselves in this one. 

This question was easily arguable because it is a heavily talked about topic right now and everyone has some sort of opinion on it. Since it's talked about a lot there were plenty of studies done that I could use in my piece. The sources I saw that were arguing against my point mainly focused on the fact that kids will become addicted, which was false on plenty of levels because marijuana hasn't been proved to be addictive and my first article had statistics that proved that argument to be wrong. I was not affected by any of the sources that I found, but I will say that it furthered my assurance that I was right. I don't believe that I have to revise my argument at all.

