Question

Any reflection or opinion on these two essays? Should Marijuana be legal? 1 answer Within 200 words.

1.

A Brief History of the Drug War

Many currently illegal drugs, such as marijuana, opium, coca, and psychedelics have been used for thousands of years for both medical and spiritual purposes.

The Early Stages of Drug Prohibition

Why are some drugs legal and other drugs illegal today? It's not based on any scientific assessment of the relative risks of these drugs – but it has everything to do with who is associated with these drugs.

The first anti-opium laws in the 1870s were directed at Chinese immigrants. The first anti-cocaine laws, in the South in the early 1900s, were directed at black men. The first anti-marijuana laws, in the Midwest and the Southwest in the 1910s and 20s, were directed at Mexican migrants and Mexican Americans. Today, Latino and especially black communities are still subject to wildly disproportionate drug enforcement and sentencing practices.

Nixon and the Generation Gap

In the 1960s, as drugs became symbols of youthful rebellion, social upheaval, and political dissent, the government halted scientific research to evaluate their medical safety and efficacy.

In June 1971, President Nixon declared a “war on drugs.” He dramatically increased the size and presence of federal drug control agencies, and pushed through measures such as mandatory sentencing and no-knock warrants. Nixon temporarily placed marijuana in Schedule One, the most restrictive category of drugs, pending review by a commission he appointed led by Republican Pennsylvania Governor Raymond Shafer. In 1972, the commission unanimously recommended decriminalizing the possession and distribution of marijuana for personal use. Nixon ignored the report and rejected its recommendations.

Between 1973 and 1977, however, eleven states decriminalized marijuana possession. In January 1977, President Jimmy Carter was inaugurated on a campaign platform that included marijuana decriminalization. In October 1977, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to decriminalize possession of up to an ounce of marijuana for personal use.

Within just a few years, though, the tide had shifted. Proposals to decriminalize marijuana were abandoned as parents became increasingly concerned about high rates of teen marijuana use. Marijuana was ultimately caught up in a broader cultural backlash against the perceived permissiveness of the 1970s.

The 1980s and 90s: Drug Hysteria and Skyrocketing Incarceration Rates

The presidency of Ronald Reagan marked the start of a long period of skyrocketing rates of incarceration, largely thanks to his unprecedented expansion of the drug war. The number of people behind bars for nonviolent drug law offenses increased from 50,000 in 1980 to over 400,000 by 1997.

Public concern about illicit drug use built throughout the 1980s, largely due to media portrayals of people addicted to the smokeable form of cocaine dubbed “crack.” Soon after Ronald Reagan took office in 1981, his wife, Nancy Reagan, began a highly-publicized anti-drug campaign, coining the slogan "Just Say No." This set the stage for the zero tolerance policies implemented in the mid-to-late 1980s. Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl Gates, who believed that “casual drug users should be taken out and shot,” founded the DARE drug education program, which was quickly adopted nationwide despite the lack of evidence of its effectiveness. The increasingly harsh drug policies also blocked the expansion of syringe access programs and other harm reduction policies to reduce the rapid spread of HIV/AIDS.

In the late 1980s, a political hysteria about drugs led to the passage of draconian penalties in Congress and state legislatures that rapidly increased the prison population. In 1985, the proportion of Americans polled who saw drug abuse as the nation's "number one problem" was just 2-6 percent. The figure grew through the remainder of the 1980s until, in September 1989, it reached a remarkable 64 percent – one of the most intense fixations by the American public on any issue in polling history. Within less than a year, however, the figure plummeted to less than 10 percent, as the media lost interest. The draconian policies enacted during the hysteria remained, however, and continued to result in escalating levels of arrests and incarceration.

Although Bill Clinton advocated for treatment instead of incarceration during his 1992 presidential campaign, after his first few months in the White House he reverted to the drug war strategies of his Republican predecessors by continuing to escalate the drug war. Notoriously, Clinton rejected a U.S. Sentencing Commission recommendation to eliminate the disparity between crack and powder cocaine sentences. He also rejected, with the encouragement of drug czar General Barry McCaffrey, health secretary Donna Shalala’s advice to end the federal ban on funding for syringe access programs. Yet, a month before leaving office, Clinton asserted in a Rolling Stone interview that "we really need a re-examination of our entire policy on imprisonment" of people who use drugs, and said that marijuana use "should be decriminalized."

At the height of the drug war hysteria in the late 1980s and early 1990s, a movement emerged seeking a new approach to drug policy. In 1987, Arnold Trebach and Kevin Zeese founded the Drug Policy Foundation – describing it as the “loyal opposition to the war on drugs.” Prominent conservatives such as William Buckley and Milton Friedman had long advocated for ending drug prohibition, as had civil libertarians such as longtime ACLU Executive Director Ira Glasser. In the late 1980s they were joined by Baltimore Mayor Kurt Schmoke, Federal Judge Robert Sweet, Princeton professor Ethan Nadelmann, and other activists, scholars and policymakers. In 1994, Nadelmann founded The Lindesmith Center as the first U.S. project of George Soros’ Open Society Institute. In 2000, the growing Center merged with the Drug Policy Foundation to create the Drug Policy Alliance.

The Pendulum is Shifting – Slowly – Toward Sensible Drug Policy

George W. Bush arrived in the White House as the drug war was running out of steam – yet he allocated more money than ever to it. His drug czar, John Walters, zealously focused on marijuana and launched a major campaign to promote student drug testing. While rates of illicit drug use remained constant, overdose fatalities rose rapidly. The era of George W. Bush also witnessed the rapid escalation of the militarization of domestic drug law enforcement. By the end of Bush's term, there were about 40,000 paramilitary-style SWAT raids on Americans every year – mostly for nonviolent drug law offenses, often misdemeanors. While federal reform mostly stalled under Bush, state-level reforms finally began to slow the growth of the drug war.

Politicians now routinely admit to having used marijuana, and even cocaine, when they were younger. When Michael Bloomberg was questioned during his 2001 mayoral campaign about whether he had ever used marijuana, he said, "You bet I did – and I enjoyed it." Barack Obama also candidly discussed his prior cocaine and marijuana use: "When I was a kid, I inhaled frequently – that was the point."

The assault on American citizens, however, has persisted. Bloomberg oversaw a higher rate of low-level marijuana arrests than any mayor in New York City history. And Obama, despite advocating for reforms – such as reducing the crack/powder sentencing disparity, ending the ban on federal funding for syringe access programs, and supporting state medical marijuana laws – has yet to shift drug control funding to a health-based approach.

Progress is inevitably slow but there is unprecedented momentum behind drug policy reform right now. We look forward to a future where drug policies are shaped by science and compassion rather than political hysteria.

2.

Marijuana May Be The Least Dangerous Recreational Drug, Study Shows

Marijuana is far safer than alcohol, tobacco and multiple other illicit substances, researchers say, and strict, legal regulation of cannabis might be a more reasonable approach than current prohibitions.

Those are the findings of a new report published in Scientific Reports that compares the lethality of the recreational use of 10 common drugs, including marijuana, alcohol, tobacco, heroin, cocaine, ecstasy, methamphetamine, diazepam, amphetamine and methadone.

Researchers found that marijuana has the lowest risk of mortality and is safer than the commonly used alcohol and tobacco as well as the rest of the drugs in the study. They determined the risk of mortality by comparing the lethal dose of each substance with a commonly used amount of each substance.

The finding that marijuana has the lowest risk when compared with the other drugs is not surprising -- previous research had found that marijuana is a substantially safer recreational drug than other commonly used recreational drugs examined in this study. That finding stands in stark contrast to the lethal risk of alcohol, which the researchers found to be potentially more deadly than heroin.

Marijuana is so much less risky than alcohol and tobacco that the researchers say their results point toward developing policies that prioritize managing the risks associated with alcohol and tobacco, rather than the illicit drugs in the study. Further, the low risk of cannabis use suggests government should use "a strict legal regulatory approach rather than the current prohibition approach" to manage the substance, the researchers write.

Many world governments, including the United States, tend to have more restrictive policies around drugs such as marijuana than they do for alcohol and tobacco. The researchers note that their results confirm that the risk of cannabis "may have been overestimated in the past" and that the risk of alcohol "may have been commonly underestimated."

Legislation around illicit substances often have a "lack of scientific basis," the researchers say, and that's a point that is reflected in U.S. drug laws.

Under the Controlled Substances Act, the U.S. has five "schedules" for drugs and chemicals that can be used to make drugs. Schedule I is reserved for drugs that the Drug Enforcement Administration considers to have the highest potential for abuse and are the "most dangerous." Marijuana has been classified as Schedule I for decades, along with other substances like heroin and LSD. Cocaine is Schedule II. Alcohol and tobacco are exempted from the CSA.

But if science dictated drug policy, where would alcohol and tobacco be placed in the CSA?

"Of course alcohol and tobacco would be Schedule I," said Mark Kleiman, professor of drug policy and criminal justice at New York University and co-author of Marijuana Legalization: What Everyone Needs To Know.

"The whole scheduling system should be scrapped and replaced with something with more dimensions," Kleiman said, but he added that common reforms to drug policy can also come with problems.

Decriminalization, while good at reducing criminal punishment for nonviolent drug users, can still leave the drug supply in criminal hands, Kleiman said. And while legalization is less of a "kludge" than decriminalization, it's too early to tell if it is the most effective, at least with regard to marijuana, Kleiman explained. Four states, as well as Washington, D.C., have legalized recreational cannabis, and retail marijuana has been for sale for only a year in Colorado and Washington. Additionally, 23 states have legalized marijuana for medical purposes.

"For most currently prohibited drugs -- except cannabis and the hallucinogens -- it looks like smarter prohibition [is the answer]: less enforcement, more concentrated on bad illicit-market side-effects than on suppressing use, but sufficient to prevent flagrant open dealing," Kleiman said.

While marijuana may be safer than alcohol and tobacco, all of them have potential risks.

From heart disease to liver disease to elevated cancer risks, excessive alcohol consumption can indeed be devastating to a person's overall health. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there are roughly 88,000 deaths attributable to alcohol use each year in the United States. In 2006, the CDC reported that there were 1.2 million emergency room visits and 2.7 million physician office visits due to excessive alcohol use.

Similarly, there's a laundry list of well-documented adverse health effects related to tobacco use, which harms nearly every organ in the body and causes the deaths ofalmost 480,000 people in the U.S. annually.

Of course, marijuana is not harmless either. Excessive use can lead to respiratory discomfort, although the drug itself has not been linked to lung damage. Studies have also shown cannabis can be addictive, however much less addictive than alcohol and even less than caffeine. That's not to say that marijuana can't be habit-forming:Between 4 and 9 percent of regular pot users can develop dependence on the drug, according to a frequently cited survey supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse. That's compared with about 15 percent of drinkers who develop a dependence for alcohol.

Among people prone to the development of psychosis, research has shown that smoking pot can lead to an earlier onset of psychosis among those prone to the disorder. And there's understandable concern about adolescent marijuana use and its effects on the developing brain.

Still, in what is likely thousands of years of human consumption, there have been no documented deaths as a result of marijuana overdose. According to a 1988 rulingfrom the DEA, a marijuana user would have to consume 20,000 to 40,000 times the amount of THC in a joint to be at risk of a fatal dose.

Answer 1

** I am writing my views on the first essay. Post the second one once again.

Legalization of marijuana is actually attributed to its dosage and effects.

First of all, let's discuss its good effects. Marijuana consists of a drug delta-9 tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). THC stops the growth of blood vessels which supply cancerous cells. It also increases appetite. So, it is an effective treatment for cancer and AIDS patients. Second, it triggers brain to produce dopamine, which makes a person feel good and pleasant. It is an effect drug for patients suffering from mental disorders related with anxiety. Besides these, there may be other good effects also, but there has been lack of studies on this topic because marijuana has been banned in many countries. Inhalation of its smoke can be harmful to immune system, lungs and brain, especially pregnant ladies.

If corrects doses are given like medicine to selected patients who actually require it (cancer, AIDS and psychiatric patients), then its use would be beneficial, elsewise its use would be extremely harmful. So, legalization of marijuana should be done, but its use should be restricted. Laws can be enforced by the government and medical advisers and doctors should sort legal permission before administering marijuana to any patient.