Legalize it
First of all, people should have the right to choose what they want to do. Our free will should enable us to smoke weed if we want. The government only has a right to limit the choices of an individual if their actions are a danger to someone else. But this does not apply to marijuana, since someone who chooses to use marijuana does so according to his or her own free will. The government also may have a right to limit individual actions if the actions pose a significant threat to the individual. But this argument does not apply to marijuana because marijuana is far less dangerous than some drugs that are legal, such as alcohol and tobacco.
If marijuana was legalized I think that the crime rate would decrease. I mean think about it, a good portion of the crime today deals with what some people call “the drug war”. Since marijuana falls in that category of illegal drugs that makes it part of “the drug war”. The reason there is so much violence that comes with dealing with drugs in the first place is because they are distributed “underground” or illegally so that any problems that might arise cannot be solved by the standard legal system but only by violence. If marijuana were to be made legal prisons would be less populated.
But on the other side, some people are set strongly on their opinion of marijuana and say that it should not be legalized because of the fact that it is a drug and some argue that it is a “gateway drug” or a drug that leads to doing others. I would have to disagree. I would say that it depends all on the person. I think that marijuana is definitely the safest drug out in the world that is considered illegal. Some other people argue that if the drug became legal then they wouldn’t want to get “high” off of someone else’s smoke. Simple solution, smokers would have their own designated smoking area just as if they were cigarettes. Problem solved.
Overall I think that if we did legalize marijuana, and learned how to...