           Marijuana is a schedule one drug. The government has stated that marijuana is as dangerous as heroin, LSD, and ecstasy because it is claimed that these drugs have no accepted medical use and have high potential for addiction. However, the National Institute of Drug Abuse cites no recorded deaths from marijuana on their website, and they break down deaths over the past fifteen years by drug, and marijuana is not mentioned once; no recorded deaths because of marijuana in the past fifteen years. If marijuana causes no deaths, and alcohol and cigarettes do, how is marijuana illegal? It could previously be argued that it would have little to no effect on the economy. In 2016, Colorado had over one billion dollars of sales. The black market for marijuana in Colorado is dissolving and the state has more money to spend on infrastructure. Therefore, since marijuana does not have serious health risks, the legalization would lead to economic prosperity in the United States.

The first problem with the legalization of marijuana is the preconceived notion that it is extremely dangerous and is easily abused. This notion stems from our own federal government. The United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), which falls under the Department of Justice, states that schedule one is, “for drugs with no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse,” so drugs on this list should never be used because of what they do to the human body. However, alcohol and tobacco are not scheduled drugs when they both qualify for both requirements. According to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAA), alcohol and tobacco are among top causes of preventable death in the United states. The NIAA is under the branch of the national Department of Health and Human Services. There is no case either where alcohol can be used for a medical use. It is a known fact that some alcohol, specifically wine, when in moderation, can have positive health benefits, but it is not used for medical use. Then on the other hand, tobacco products cause cancer and have zero health benefits. According to the NIAA, alcohol and tobacco yield many health risks such as mouth and throat cancer, liver cancer, and cardiovascular disease. Then on top of that, people can develop alcoholism which is the dependence of alcohol, and tobacco users can develop a dependence on nicotine. This information can be coupled with another website from the Department of Health and Human Services. The Center for Disease Control (CDC) cites that alcohol is responsible for 88,000 deaths and 2.5 million years of potential life lost every year. Then cigarettes, not all tobacco products, are responsible for 480,000 deaths each year. In 2010, there was estimated at $249 billion spent on alcohol, and nearly $300 billion on tobacco products. People are paying to kill themselves… and it is legal?! After going through every article about marijuana there are no reported deaths, and the articles on marijuana claim that there is “some” evidence or “almost” enough evidence to link marijuana to negative health benefits. Not only that but the DEA itself, states in its handbook that, “there have been no death from overdose of marijuana has been reported,” which is really just a sly way for them to say that no one has died because of marijuana without coming out and directly saying it. Then the DEA goes on to blatantly contradict itself by stating that marijuana can, “be prescribed for the control of nausea and vomiting caused by chemotherapeutic agents used in the treatment of cancer and to stimulate appetite in AIDS patients,” but the same agency (DEA) has it scheduled as a drug with no currently accepted medical use. The DEA also says that marijuana usage can risk of cancer of the head, neck, lungs, and respiratory tract, which sounds very harmful and can turn people off of wanting this drug legalized. However, the real question is: “what does the government know that they are not telling us?,” The American Cancer Society (ACS) is a nationwide voluntary conglomerate of medical professionals that is dedicated to eliminating cancer. The ACS has funded forty-seven Nobel laureate researchers. A laureate is the person or organization that is awarded the Nobel Prize. These forty-seven laureates have made leaps and bounds in cancer research, so the ACS is extremely credible and reliable when it comes to information on cancer. Recently, the ACS has started doing studies to see the effects marijuana has on cancer. The scientists have reported that THC and other cannabinoids slow growth of cancer cells and in some cases even kill cancer cells. So it comes down to what the government has to say and what qualified scientists have to say. The Department of Justice is usually run by an attorney general, and attorney generals did not become attorney generals by taking extensive science classes, so they have no place to tell a highly qualified scientist that he or she is wrong. However, in the DEA’s Drugs of Abuse Resource Guide, it states that marijuana can cause cancer, yet scientists for the ACS say that it helps cancer. It seems peculiar that the government would outright lie and say that marijuana causes cancer when it does not, unless they are fulfilling their own personal agenda by keeping marijuana scheduled incorrectly and lying about the effects of it. The first step in order to reduce the backlash of the legalization of marijuana is educating the public of the real health effects of marijuana.

    Once the preconceived notion of marijuana is debunked, it is easier to look at the topic of legalization through a strictly economic lense. In order to make the big bucks from legalization of marijuana, recreational marijuana needs to be legalized specifically. Over half the states in the US have legalized medical marijuana, and there has not been a boom in economics. That makes it easier for skeptics to say that the legalization of medical marijuana will be a bust, and not worth the trouble it takes to legalize it. That is not the case at all. In order to extrapolate, a state that has legal recreational marijuana for a few years would need to be examined. Colorado is a good candidate for this; recreational marijuana began selling in Colorado in January 2014. According to the Denver Post, popular newspaper for citizens of Colorado, states that in 2014, marijuana sales hit $700 million, and the state collected ten percent of that in taxes from marijuana. The tax revenue from marijuana slowly increased over 2014 as well. It went from $2-3 million in January and February and got up to $5-6 million in May and June. This shows how the market is growing, and although the state legislation expected bigger numbers, it is still notable that there is positive growth. Now that was the first year that marijuana was legalized. In 2015, Colorado had right under $1 billion of marijuana sales which was a forty-two percent increase from 2014. This led to $135 million in taxes for the state, and the state got to allocate twenty percent of those taxes to schools, and the rest gets dispersed between the local government and state government. The legalization of marijuana has helped Colorado tremendously because according to the governor John Hickenlooper,”The people who were smoking marijuana before legalization still are. Now, they're paying taxes,” so instead of not benefitting from marijuana, he decided to take a progressive outlook on the situation. Now another common argument that can be made is that,”The black market will always be there, and nothing will change that.” That is quite the contrary actually because although dispensary prices vary, on average, the dispensary prices are actually cheaper than the street prices. For example, the price for an eighth of marijuana in a dispensary in Colorado is from $25 to $40, and on the streets, an eighth goes anywhere from $45 to $60. With that being said, any citizen who cares about their money would go to the dispensary over the black market, and this is why the black market for marijuana in Colorado has been dissolving. Then lastly, in the most recent year of marijuana sales, Colorado had over $1.3 billion in marijuana sales, and almost $200 million were made in tax revenues. Colorado has experienced a steady increase of sales since legalization of marijuana in 2014. Using Colorado as a microcosm for the US, it can be expected that with the legalization of marijuana nationwide, the American economy would benefit as a whole.

Marijuana needs to be looked at through an unbiased lense by society. When looked at through an unbiased and taking into account just facts, legalization can bolster the American economy, and the government can stop wasting our tax dollars enforcing something that is more of a cost than beneficial. It could quite possibly be the jumpstart that the American economy needs in order to reduce the national debt substantially, but this will never be known if it is not legalized.