Recently, the issue of marijuana use was brought to the attention of two former political leaders: Former President, Bill Clinton and Al Gore. When asked about his past drug use, Clinton refrained from answering. According to Bill Turque, a biographer of Al Gore, Gore spent much of his young adulthood “smoking dope and skipping through fields of clover” (Lowry 1). The irony exists in the fact that both Bill Clinton and Al Gore had previous encounters experimenting with marijuana, but somehow managed to become significant political leaders in society. Is marijuana really that harmful? Researchers have proven that marijuana is in fact a harmful drug, however, in comparison to other drugs, the effects are minimal. In the past decade, one issue has been revisited over and over again: The debate whether or not marijuana should be legalized for medical purposes. Many states have already passed laws legalizing marijuana for medicinal reasons. Marijuana should be legalized regardless.
The issue of legalizing marijuana has been an issue of controversy since the Marijuana Tax Act was passed in 1937. This tax banned marijuana in the United States in attempt to cut back on the recreational use of the drug. This tax also made getting a hold of marijuana very difficult. In 1970, marijuana was classified as a Schedule 1 drug under the Controlled Substances Act. Under this category, marijuana was said to be a highly addictive drug, with no medicinal value. Within this category falls two other dangerous drugs: heroin and LSD. In the 1970's marijuana was re-discovered by cancer patients, who found that smoking marijuana relieved the nausea and vomiting associated with chemotherapy treatments. In 1971, the National Organization ...
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...which our society has developed. As far as legalizing marijuana for medical reasons goes, our government would only be doing the patients a favor. Eliminating suffering that cannot be found through any other drug, should be perfectly acceptable.
Works Cited
Lowry, Richard. “Weed Whackers- The Anti-Marijuana Forces and why they’re wrong”. The National Review. 20 Aug. 2001<http://search.epnet.com/direct.asp?an=4975215&db=aph>
Grupp, Stanley E. Marijuana. Columbus, Ohio: Charles E. Merrill Publishing Company. 1971.
Thomas, Chuck. “Marijuana Arrests and Incarceration in the United States: Preliminary Report”. Marijuana Policy Project Nov. 1998 <http://www.mpp.org/arrests/prisoners.html>.
“Poll Finds Increasing Support for Legalizing Marijuana”. Alcholism and Drug Abuse Weekly 21 Jul. 2003. <http://search.epnet.com/direct.asp?an=10294591&db=aph>
Pretty, Francis. n.d. Sir Francis Drake's Famous Voyage Round the World. Hoboken, N.J.: BiblioBytes, n.d. eBook Collection (EBSCOhost), EBSCOhost (accessed April 23, 2014).
...owerful nation during the 17th, 18th, and 19th century. There’s no doubt that he was the Captain of his own ship and leader of many to follow even after his death in 1596. He would be admired for centuries for his leadership and brilliant privateering maneuvers. His leadership help catapult a nation into the status of world dominant power as well as dominant sea power for centuries to come. Sir Francis Drake, England’s father of the sea, all because of one man’s hatred for a religion and the love of wealth and fame.
Similarly, the relationship expectations in Chinese customs and traditions were strongly held onto. The daughters of the Chinese family were considered as a shame for the family. The sons of the family were given more honour than the daughters. In addition, some daughters were even discriminated. The only daughter in the family, Liang had to hear her grandmothers taunt: “If you want a place in this world [...] do not be born as a girl child” (Choy 27). The girls from the Chinese family were considered useless. They were always looked down upon in the family; they felt as if the girls cannot provide a family with wealth, this attitude would really affect the parents from Chinese family preferred boys as they thought; boys could work and provide the family income. Due to Chinese culture preference to having boys, girls often did not have the right to live. In the Chinese ethnicity, the family always obeyed the elder’s decision. When the family was trying to adapt to the new country and they were trying to learn th...
“El Draque” or “The Dragon” the Spanish called this English admiral out of fear. Sir Francis Drake was born at Crownsdale, near Tavistock, Devon around the 1540’s. He served, as an apprentice in the Thames Coastal Trade after his father became a preacher at Chatham. He led several expeditions against the Spanish Main as well as an attack against the Spanish city of Cadiz. Drake was the first Englishman to circumnavigate the globe and he helped defeat the Spanish Armada in 1588. He was a successful privateer, a talented navigator and one of the most famous seamen in history.
Just as alcohol prohibition during the 20’s and 30’s was not successful, marijuana prohibition has not been successful either, as evidenced by its current and increasing popularity in the United States. According the deputy director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, Mr. Paul Armentano, marijuana was made illegal in the United States with the passing of the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937 (2014). Later, Congress classified marijuana as a Schedule I drug under the Controlled Substance Act of 1970 (Armentano, 2014). Since then, hundreds of thousands of Americans have been arrested for the possession, distribution and use of marijuana. According to Professor Katherine Beckett, “there were 829,625 marijuana arrests” (Beckett, et.al., N.D.) in 2006 and that number is increasing. The debate on whether or not to legalize marijuana for recreational use has raged for decades but is beginning to see the light of day with the recent state-level victories. With Washington and Colorado guiding the way, the country as a whole is considering the issue of whether or not marijuana should be legalized. If legalized, tax revenues could potentially generate millions, if not billions, of dollars annually for state and federal coffers. Marijuana should be legalized. Legalization will not increase usage nor will the current prohibition decrease usage; however tax revenue from the distribution and sale of marijuana could benefit many state programs and even possibly eliminate governmental deficits in the future.
Marijuana, the most abused drug in America, has had a lot of publicity recently. Marijuana has caused multiple economic problems within the U.S. A controversial question has arisen from the increased popularity and troubles of this drug. The question is whether or not the U.S. government should legalize marijuana possession and sale in the country. Many Americans believe that the drug should be legalized for various reasons; others, however, are against the legalization of the dangerous drug. While legalization has both pros and cons, the positives of legalizing marijuana for those people over the age of twenty-one far outweigh the negative aspects of legalization.
Wilson, Clare “The Case for Marijuana by Prescription." Marijuana (Contemporary Issues Companion). Tardiff, Joseph, ed. Farmington Hills: Greenhaven Press, 2008. 63-70. Print
Marijuana is a shredded mix of dry flowers, stems and the seeds of a plant called cannabis and people usually smoke it in the form of cigarettes for relaxation. Ever since marijuana hit mainstream America over 30 years ago, government prohibition of it has been the subject of an ongoing debate. Should marijuana be legalized? Proponents of marijuana argue that there are numerous medical benefits and that the drug is not more harmful than tobacco or alcohol. Therefore, prohibiting it intrudes on personal freedom. On the other hand, opponents argue that marijuana is too dangerous; its legalization would increase the chances of the drug falling into the hands of kids and that marijuana use often progresses to the use of more dangerous drugs like heroin and cocaine. In the past decade, a number of movements to legalize the use of marijuana has been gaining momentum. According to the 2011 Gallup survey, a record high 50% of Americans say that marijuana should be legalized and this figure marks a 4% increase compared to the previous year. Support for legalizing marijuana was 30% in 2000, 40% in 2009 before reaching 50% last year. This shows that despite government efforts to eliminate its use, marijuana is becoming more popular. More and more people realize that legalizing marijuana brings a host of benefits. It not only offers medical benefits to the terminally ill but it could also be a source of tax revenues and could save the tax payers billions of dollars that is spent on enforcement costs.
The legalization of marijuana in the United States is a long and historically debated subject. Pro-legalization advocates provide many reasons for the decriminalization of marijuana; some of the reasons include, zero recorded deaths from direct use, wasting tax-payer money prosecuting non-violent offenders, and prohibition promotes organized crime. Anti-legalization organizers condemn legalization due to marijuana being considered a gateway drug, moral and religious opposition, legalization could lead to harder drugs being legalized, and the fear that legalization would enable the drug to be more accessible to children. There are many positive and negative aspects of legalization, but personally I am in favor of legalization and taxation of the non-deadly drug. In this paper, I will outline the good and the bad of legalization and investigate if legalization would be beneficial to America and society as a whole.
Legalization of marijuana has become an increasingly popular topic for debate in society with “sentiment in favor of legalization [increasing] by 20 [percentage] points in just over a decade,” bringing support for legalization to 52% (Dionne and Galston). The most common arguments for reforming current legislation are the following: enforcement wastes public resources, taxation can provide a new source of revenue, and enforcement of current laws is discriminatory (Dionne and Galston). It is necessary to look at the impact on the primary stakeholders by analyzing the various harms and benefits through application of the ethical theories of utilitarianism and deontology, in order to determine the solution that will result in the best possible outcome.
The discussion whether marijuana should be legalized and taxed is very present within the last month. That’s why I’m going to discuss the pro and cons about the legalisation of weed, as it is often called, in the following research paper.
Zhong, Xueping, Zheng Wang, and Bai Di. Some of Us: Chinese Women Growing up in the Mao Era. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2001.
...n our public schools today - they may seem like a good suggestion, but when looked at closer, all uniforms do is disguise the center of attention of the real concern that need to be successfully worked out. If security is a worry, we shouldn't be looking to a uniform to rectify the issue - if the concern is students not concentrating on school work, or getting meager grades, again, uniforms should not be seen as a way out. We have a duty to teach our children as much as we can in safe surroundings, and those are grave concerns that cannot be resolved by putting all children in the same attire. If all the children are wearing the same clothes, you still have a question with security and poor instruction - and now you have a student body that is being taught not to express their individuality. Uniforms in some cases, add to a school's concern, they do not answer them.
Students are distracted by the variety of clothing they choose to wear it takes away from them gaining inner knowledge. Students choose to wear fancy, strange, or bright colorful clothes. Students become more interested in paying attention to what other students are wearing and what they have instead of focusing on the subject they are being taught in class. Students should be focusing on gaining new knowledge and skills. Wearing uniforms would teach students how to focus on their personalities, inner beauty, rather than their
Point 1 (Brian): Having school uniforms will greatly lift the feeling of teamwork and sense of school spirit and belonging, and is a benefit for students. According to SafeSchools.edublogs.org, school uniform programs make it easier for students to develop a sense of belonging at school because greater attention is given to who they are instead of what they wear. School uniforms will make students feel that they are ...