Marijuana legalization has been the center of attention for the last fifty years.  Marijuana became a popular drug around the 1960's and 1970's with the emergence of hippies and "flower power".  Marijuana is very popular because of the high it gives off and the sense of euphoria that can be experienced.  It has been called a "gateway drug" because it leads users to want to try stronger even more lethal drugs.  Many argue that the drug should be federally legalized, but this has not settled well with pediatricians, parents, and politicians.  Despite the protests against federal legalization, the benefits are numerous.  The government of the United States should consider passing this law on a federal level, as it would bring about prosperity, increase in medical practices and increased revenue.  The federal legalization of marijuana will improve public health and provide a major boost to the economy of the United States.

The first of the two issues federal legalization of marijuana would help solve is the United States economy.  In an article by Harry Bradford called "14 Ways Marijuana Legalization Could Boost The Economy", Mr. Bradford discusses how the legalization of marijuana would boost the economy and attempt to pull the United States out of the trillions of dollars of debt that it has accumulated since its origin.  He then goes on to talk about how economists estimate that 14 billion dollars could be raised each year if marijuana was legalized in all fifty states.  If this movement happens, then it is projected within 5 to 10 years, the national debt would be eliminated.  Around twenty states already have a booming medical marijuana industry which provides more jobs for American citizens and brings in excessive revenue.  In Colorado the first day marijuana usage was legalized, up to one million dollars in revenue was made.  It was estimated that one billion dollars in sales would be collected in the first fiscal year and excess taxes will also raise about $2.2-6.4 billion.  Enforcing marijuana prohibition costs $41.8 billion annually.  This money could be used to create college grants and scholarships for students however, when President Ronald Reagan started the war on drugs in the 1970's this grant money was allocated to enforce marijuana prohibition.  This is why college students receive little to nothing from the government to help afford their college education. Some businesses like weGrow, a medical marijuana dispensary chain on the West Coast, creates an estimated 75 jobs per store which is exemplary for our economy.  

Many people are flocking to the West Coast as part of a "Green Rush" and if marijuana is legalized, the drug could be the United States' number one cash crop and the key to bringing us out of a literal abyss of debt.   This is a very serious issue because currently the United States government is $19 trillion and counting in debt and with Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont pushing for a Free College program in his Presidential campaign platform that would cost the government another $62.6 billion annually. The United States government would be digging our nation into a deeper hole, however with the federal legalization of marijuana the revenue collected through taxing the drug would slowly but surely decrease the national debt.  The national debt would only decrease if the funds were allocated accordingly and not used on other government projects or military spending.  Therefore the President would have to bring in top economic advisors to appropriately distribute the revenue in the government machine.    

Another reason the argument for federal legalization of marijuana is important and worth the time of the American people young and old is that marijuana has been legalized for medical purposes, some also for recreational reasons, in 23 states.  That is almost half of the United States of America so clearly in the next year or two all of the United States will have marijuana legalized on a federal level.  Doctors Banys and Cermak's article focuses on the impact of marijuana legalization in California if the bill is passed in November of 2016 by concentrating on the regulation of marijuana growing for personal consumption and for distribution, maintenance of marijuana dispensaries, and health benefit advertisement to promote the drug as being safe and friendly rather than as an abusive substance which it has been labelled as since the 1970's.   

The second issue the federal legalization of marijuana would solve is healthcare practices.  The history of marijuana in medicine started with its first experimentation in the 1960's by Dr. Raphael Mechoulam, a heavily decorated scientist.  Using Mechoulam's medical marijuana research, GW Pharmaceuticals a company in London, England have begun developing a drug which uses marijuana called Sativex to help aid people suffering from multiple sclerosis.  Due to the legalization of marijuana in Colorado, many people have moved there for medical use, not just to use marijuana recreationally.  There are even some families in Colorado who are medical marijuana growers.  They develop strains of marijuana, such as Charlotte's Web, to help cure multiple illnesses.  

Charlotte's Web has been used to treat Dravet's Syndrome, a severe form of epilepsy.  The current medication used to treat Dravet's Syndrome has horrible side effects which prompted many parents to move their families to Colorado for this new healing marijuana drug.  According to recent medical statistics, the amount of seizures in one child suffering from Dravet's Syndrome went from 200-300 a day to 2-3 a month after using the Charlotte's Web strain of medical marijuana.  Around 3 million people in the United States suffer from epilepsy according to the American Epilepsy Society.  Dr. Sanjay Gupta who is CNN's lead medical correspondent and an accredited brain surgeon was first anti-marijuana legalization but, he changed his position after doing extensive research and investigating patients who were using or had used medical marijuana strains to help them deal with illness, like Dravet's Syndrome.  He then presented a documentary on CNN titled "Weed" where he explained his findings on medical marijuana and its side effects.  He worked along-side Josh Stanley and his brothers to develop the Charlotte's Web strain.  Mr. Stanley was involved in the process of passing the marijuana legalization bill in Colorado as well as kick-starting the medical marijuana industry in Colorado.  In a TEDx Talk in Colorado, Mr. Stanley speaks on the impact of medical marijuana in pediatric epilepsy treatment. He was involved in the passing of the bill in Colorado to legalize marijuana and comes out as being against it at first because people wanted to legalize cannabis for recreational use while he only wanted to legalize it for medical purposes.  

Josh Stanley talks of a young girl he worked with on this project called Charlotte and how she frequently uses medical cannabis to control her Dravet's Syndrome related epileptic seizures.  These seizures can occur up to 20 times a day and last 15 to 25 minutes long, about 400 a week.  These seizures cause Charlotte excruciating pain and she is fully conscious the entire time.  So Josh and his five brothers along with Dr. Sanjay Gupta began an experiment to breed a very exclusive strain of cannabis that was free of THC (Tetrahydrocannabinol), but abundant in CBD (Cannabidiol).  Tetrahydrocannabinol is what causes the euphoric and sometimes hallucinogenic feel someone gets when smoking marijuana.  Cannabidiol however opens the lungs, reduces inflammation, and reduces seizure activity.  The breeding of this particular strain had been completed in late 2012 and Charlotte's family contacted Josh and his brothers about using their new form of cannabis to treat Charlotte's Dravet's Syndrome.  "After the first dose of medical cannabis, Charlotte's seizures reduced to 0-1 a week" (Stanley) which just goes to show that medical cannabis definitely works when being used to treat seizures.  The name of the strain of cannabis was then named Charlotte's Web after her and the treatment programs along with test studies and other sources of information about medical marijuana are available through Josh's nonprofit organization called The Realm of Caring.  Not only can medical cannabis treat seizures, it has also been linked with decreasing the progression of ALS, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and many more illnesses.  

In a peer-reviewed article by George J. Annas published in a journal of medicine in 1997, he focuses on how physicians administering medical marijuana to patients is "misguided, heavy-handed, and inhumane".  He calls for marijuana to be moved from the Schedule I narcotics list to Schedule II.  With this being an older article Annas states that "The drug ... has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States", which shows how outdated it is because medicinal marijuana is being prescribed as we speak to people suffering from seizures and the results are impressive.  Annas also states that marijuana is a "lethal drug" and a person would have to consume "1,500 pounds of marijuana to overdose" and possibly die on the drug.  It is in no way possible for any person to smoke 1500 pounds of marijuana in one sitting or even in one day.  1,500 pounds is the estimated weight of one and a half automobiles, again stating that it is physically impossible for a single individual to smoke that amount of marijuana in one sitting or even a day.  

According to the National Cancer Institute it is not possible to overdose on weed because "cannabinoid receptors, unlike opioid receptors, are not located in the brainstem areas controlling respiration, lethal overdoses from Cannabis and cannabinoids do not occur" (Leaf Science).  Also a reliable source reports that "studies show that marijuana has a therapeutic index of 40,000:1. This means someone would have to take 40,000 times the normal amount of marijuana in order to die.  Opioid-based painkillers have much lower therapeutic indexes. For example, the therapeutic index of morphine is only 70:1."  The claims in the medical journal article written by George Annas are extremely absurd and laughable despite his work being published in a well-respected medical journal.  It just goes to show how far medical and technological studies have gone in the past twenty or so years.  

A few other articles focused on the public health aspect of medical marijuana. Marijuana Legalization: Impact on Physicians and Public Health was peer written about how marijuana shows promise in improving public health however the authors state that "robust clinical evidence is still lacking".  The writers show support for federal legalization of marijuana but in other parts of the journal article they criticize the evidence for improvement in health and the effects of the drug on the users.  The final peer-reviewed medical article focuses on a study to determine if medical marijuana use in adolescents impacts their IQ scores.  This source complements the other pro-legalization sources advocating the legalization of marijuana in this essay because the study found that decrease in IQ scores could not be linked to adolescent marijuana usage, therefore correlation could not determine causation.           

In conclusion, there is substantial evidence that "reefer madness" is all a hoax, simply propaganda put up by right wing conservatives who were around during Ronald Reagan's "War on Drugs".  Ultra-conservative Americans are using fear mongering and other radical tactics to convince politicians and other figures of influence to vote against legalization and throw dirt on a drug that clearly is not harmful.  The federal legalization of marijuana would be both beneficial to the United States economy and its health care system.  This movement has many important and influential people pushing for it such as Cheech Marin, Tommy Chong, Bill Maher, Willie Nelson, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, Brad Pitt, and many other celebrities, politicians, doctors, and figures.  Within the next couple years hopefully all fifty states in our great country will be "Green States".  However, this drug must be regulated and be tested further to prove its effectiveness and safety.  Only then will marijuana be fully accepted by the American people and one day accepted universally.      

