In the year 2015, in Colorado alone, sales for marijuana soared very close to $1 billion and taxes on the plant reached $135 million (The Cannabist). The medical and recreational marijuana businesses are doing very well in every aspect of business and marketing. However, the benefits of legalizing marijuana are surpassing just the economic aspects of the plant. Clothes, food, textiles, soap, plastics, explosives, methanol, gasoline, paper and countless other products can be made out of hemp (a byproduct of the cannabis plant). In fact, up until 1883 about 75%-90% of paper products were made from the hemp plant including; bibles, bank notes, books and newspapers (ccguide). Hemp was used for hundreds of years as the main source for paper production. Compared to trees, marijuana is the ideal plant for paper production because of its fast cultivation period and the fact that it does not require harsh chemicals for bleaching. In addition to bringing in billions in sales and tax revenue to state and national governments, legalizing marijuana can save people money by putting a stop to millions in wasted law enforcement dollars and "the war on drugs". So why should we make marijuana legal? Because countless amounts of people have had their lives ruined over a plant, and after 75 years of prohibition the government still has yet to stop the use of this "drug" that is proven to help people more than hurt them. Because if we make marijuana legal, the benefits will certainly out-weigh any form of damages that may or may not come as a result of releasing the national ban on the plant. Making the cannabis plant legal not only has huge economic and sociological benefits, but also offers a multitude of medicinal and other marketable uses.

People have been growing hemp for thousands of years, even our founding fathers George Washington and Thomas Jefferson grew hemp (Hemp Basics). Hemp can be used to make paper and civilizations have been using it to do so for thousands of years, like the Chinese and medieval Europeans (Hemp Basics). It has a wide range of industrial applications from clothing and plastics, to gasoline and materials that can replace concrete. The cannabis plant can be cultivated in 3-6 months as opposed to a tree which can take up to 30 years to reach maturity. Also, the paper pulping process of cannabis doesn't require deadly chemicals like bleach and dioxins (highly toxic chemical compounds), making it more environmentally friendly to make (Hemp Basics). Another environmentally conscious aspect of the hemp plant is that hemp can be used to make a fiberboard that is more lightweight and is stronger than trees, giving people a reason not to cut down the forests. Hemp can be processed into an incredibly durable fiber which is stronger and softer than cotton and one acre of hemp produces more clothing fiber than 3 acres of cotton (The Many Uses of Cannabis). It can also be used to make building materials. France uses a process called Isochanvre in which they take the hurds (the soft inner core of the plant) of hemp and mix it with naturally occurring lyme and water, it then hardens into a mineral like substance and is more lightweight than concrete without being less durable (Mitchka). It has even been used as a food crop, hemp seed has been proven to contain the highest amount of essential fatty acid in the entire plant world as well as being full of proteins and essential vitamins, making it a viable source of nutrients. In fact, it is the only known plant source that contains all of the necessary amino acids and essential fatty acids to sustain human life (Lynn Osburn). So in theory, you could eat hemp seeds your entire life and you would survive and thrive. 

Another useful aspect of the cannabis plant is the medicinal and pharmacological properties it can offer people. When dried and cultivated, the flower of the cannabis plant, known as marijuana, can be smoked or baked into food that can provide users with a treatment to multiple ailments. The main chemical compound, THC (tetrahydrocannabinol) effects the body in many different ways, the most popular use for THC is to reduce nausea in cancer patients, but the benefits do not stop there. It has been found in clinical studies that, " ... THC and other cannabinoids such as CBD slow growth and/or cause death in certain types of cancer cells ... " (The American Cancer Society). It does this by targeting the cancer cells and blocking the development of blood vessels that allow the tumor to grow, as it infiltrates the immune system it targets the cancer cells and inhibits them from growing and spreading. THC can also help treat less severe forms of illness like; chronic arthritis, back pain, epilepsy, depression, anxiety, diarrhea, insomnia, panic attacks, lyme disease and many other types of illnesses (TACS). It can also treat anorexia, loss in appetite in AIDS patients, and nausea in chemotherapy patients. THC works in your brain by tricking your hypothalamus into thinking it's not full, thus sending out a chemical through your neurotransmitters telling you that you need to eat (TACS). Another medical fact about cannabis is that it is virtually impossible to overdose from smoking or ingesting THC. The National Cancer Institute explained this by saying, "Because cannabinoid receptors ...  are not located in the brainstem areas controlling respiration, lethal overdoses from Cannabis and cannabinoids do not occur" (TNCI). So, for example, opioid painkiller receptors are located in the same place in your brain that controls respiratory functions and if you take too many opioid painkillers, it can cause you to stop breathing. However, the receptors in your brain that absorb THC are not located near the place in your brain that is in charge of respiratory functions. Meaning, it is physically impossible to ingest so much THC that you overdose and die. In fact, throughout recorded history there hasn't been a single instance of someone dying from an overdose of marijuana. Yet, annually 2.5 million people around the world die from alcohol related cases and 6 million people die from tobacco (CDC).

Arresting people for the possession of marijuana is a costly and non-economically stable thing to do. The United States convicts and sentences more people to prison time than any other country in the world. According to a recent study of global incarceration rates done by BBC News, the United States has a prison population 2.5 times that of Russia, and almost 1.5 times that of communist China. Every year the U.S incarcerates almost 800,000 Americans for non-violent, cannabis based offenses (ACLU). If marijuana was legal we wouldn't be wasting taxpayer dollars arresting people for something as harmless as having marijuana in their possession. A single marijuana charge is enough to keep hardworking individuals from getting into college and robs them of the opportunities that come with a college education. The war on drugs was a costly venture that failed and left us with a $1 trillion hole in our pocket. In business, you do not continue funding the project that is wasting the company money, so why are we doing this with the war on drugs? Instead of pouring our money into preventing the sale of this plant, we as a nation could be reaping the tax benefits that come with the sales of marijuana. According to Harvard economist Jeffery Miron, the average global annual revenue that comes from marijuana trade is $113 billion, which represents about $45 billion in tax revenue that the U.S government isn't taking advantage of (Fortune). In Colorado and Washington alone, the sales of marijuana have reached almost $2 billion dollars, and those are only two states! Imagine the money that the U.S economy can get if we legalize it in all 50 states and our providences, simple math would suggest that the total amount in revenue would be somewhere around $100 billion dollars. Legalizing marijuana would pose as a major resolution to our country's major economic problem.

There are many people that believe that if marijuana is made legal, it will infiltrate schools much easier than it already does, however that is simply not true. The Center for Disease Control recently did a study that showed teen marijuana use in the state of Colorado has declined below the national average as of 2011 and dropped an average of 2% every year. People also think that just because marijuana is legal that anyone and everyone will be able to get their hands on it. However, in the same study done by the CDC, mentioned earlier, the research also covered the easiness for children to access it on school grounds (Halcyon). They found that the availability of marijuana to children on school property went down an average of 5% every two years, while the national rate of availability went up an average of 3.1% every two years (Halcyon). Also the availability of illegal drugs on Colorado school grounds is down below the national average by a staggering 8.4% (Halcyon). Meaning that since the legalization and regulation of marijuana, it has become harder for school age children to come into contact with, and to buy illegal drugs and marijuana. This is because when you make marijuana legal and regulated, it takes away from the power of the black market and drug dealers that have infiltrated the schools because there is no need to be sneaky about getting weed. And instead it gives the power back to the state and local government as well as the school district. In fact, it has been proven so effective that the national government has stated that it will respect the authority of Colorado's government and will allow it to continue to regulate the sale of marijuana without federal interference (Halcyon). This is huge for the future of legalized marijuana because the facts and statistics have disproved one of the main arguing points for anti-marijuana lobbyists and activists. It disproved that legalizing and regulating marijuana will destroy the youth of Colorado and will provide teens with the tool to delay their cognitive development.

But won't legalizing marijuana cause an increase in crime rates? No, that is not true, if anything, legalizing marijuana will pull crime down. If it is legalized, all of the people who are now smuggling and moving large quantities across state and national boarders will no longer be committing a crime, they will simply be moving a product from the manufacturing centers to the distribution centers. Possession accounts for a vast majority of marijuana related crimes, so it makes sense to conclude that if we no longer make possession a crime, then the rates will go down because it will no longer be considered a crime. A professor in criminology at University of Texas at Dallas has done a study that spanned 26 years, 1990-2016, and in this study they looked at the rates of occurrence in what the FBI calls Part 1 Crimes, which are considered incredibly heinous violent crimes (rape, burglary, homicide, robbery aggravated assault, larceny, and auto theft) in states that have either legalized or decriminalized marijuana (Fortune). The results of the study show that the rates of crime of the past 26 years in the 11 states that have made laws decriminalizing marijuana, have not increased, and in most cases actually decreased (Huffington Post). The head of the study Robert Morris says, "for some forms of violence  --  homicide and assault  --  we found support for declines after the passing of this legislation" (Morris). His study showed that after people ingested THC they became more calm, relaxed and less prone to conducting violent behaviors. Bottom line, Morris' study and countless others have concluded that there is virtually no relation to violent crime and ingesting THC, the only thing anyone has ever killed after ingesting THC is a bag of potato chips.

What is stopping someone from ingesting THC and driving a car? This will impair their motor vehicle skills and will lead to fatal crashes. This is very true, THC does in fact impair your motor coordination and other cognitive abilities, so it's a no brainer that the laws against driving under the influence of THC will be just as strict as if you were driving while drunk. The law is the law and currently if you are caught driving under the influence of marijuana, the sentence is just as severe or more severe compared to someone being caught driving under the influence of alcohol.

We shouldn't legalize marijuana because if children get a hold of it, it can severely impede their cognitive development. Children who smoke marijuana have a decrease in IQ levels by 1-4 points (NSAASA). Alcohol has the same exact effects on children who are still in the developmental stages. And according to a study done by the National Survey of American Attitudes on Substance Abuse, alcohol and tobacco were the most readily available substances for youth age 12-17, where 50% of all youth in that study reported that they could gain access to alcohol or tobacco within a day (NSAASA). Yet only 31% stated that they could get access to marijuana within a day, and 45% said they would be unable to get marijuana at all. If marijuana were legalized, there is no doubt that it would be slightly easier for youth to obtain it. But these are only "if" statements. According to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse, 70.4% of people 18 and older have reported that they have had some amount of alcohol in the past month, and 56.4% of people stated that they have had some form of alcohol in the past week. What do these statistics mean? They mean that it is already possible for youth to get access to alcohol which is, in its nature, more harmful than marijuana because you can actually overdose on alcohol. So even if youth can gain access to marijuana it poses less of a threat to them than what is already available to a majority of youth at this very moment. 

In conclusion, marijuana should be legalized or at the very least decriminalized. The United States can benefit from its decriminalization in a vast number of ways, from the economic benefits, the medicinal and pharmacological benefits, and the sociological benefits of its legalization. The marijuana business is a multibillion dollar corporation and the United States is missing out on the opportunity of a lifetime by not cashing in on this cash crop. The tax revenue alone could put a sizeable dent in our seemingly never ending hole of debt. Not to mention the medicinal benefits of legalizing the plant. Also the manufacturing benefits of cannabis are almost incalculable, using hemp we can make products ranging from food to gasoline I propose that we legalize marijuana across the United States, it could give us countless benefits that we can't reap at the moment because it's illegal.  It has been clinically proven to slow and even kill cancer cells in the human body, as well as cure a vast list of other medical ailments. So why is the cure for cancer illegal?

