Persuasive Essay: Why Should Marijuana Be Legalized?

Have you ever thought about what marijuana actually does to you? Most people hear the word marijuana and see the picture perfect scenario. They picture goofy stoners smoking a joint, and laughing until there stomachs hurt. This would be the situation in a perfect world. Unfortunately we do not live in a perfect world. There are always setbacks to every thing we do. As humans evolve we believe more and more that we are all invincible. We do not think about the major affects of the different things we do recreationally. This includes marijuana. One of the biggest debates in the United States is the debate about legalizing marijuana. Many people believe that marijuana should be legalized because why not? They think that it would be beneficial

Experiments throughout the years have proven that when people smoke marijuana they are more likely to start using other hard drugs like heroin or cocaine. In an article on drugabuse.gov, they explain results of one of the experiments they did on rodents. “Early exposure to cannabinoids in adolescent rodents decreases the reactivity of brain dopamine reward centers later in adulthood. To the extent that these findings generalize to humans, this could help explain early marijuana initiates’ increased vulnerability for drug abuse and addiction to other substances of abuse later in life that ahs ben reported by most epidemiological studies.” (“Is marijuana a gateway drug?” 1). This article discusses the idea that THC has an ability to lead the brain to achieve enhanced responses to other drugs. In other words, when you smoke marijuana you get a high, but that high also leaves you wanting more. After you feel like you want more and try new drugs, your brain has been enhanced to get a more intense high off the harder stuff so people start using harder drugs. These harder drugs can include anything from cocaine to heroin to ecstasy. All of these are life threating and have had multiple overdoses/deaths across the United States. This is one of the main reasons to keep marijuana illegal. We don’t need all the teenagers in the United States to be trying heroin or