By David Zheng
<[email protected]>

I’ll admit. I used to be hesitant when it came to the topic of legalizing marijuana.

I knew only the traditional arguments against marijuana: it served as a gateway to harder drugs; it led to ethical decline in children; it might have even resulted in physical damage to its users. With the debate over marijuana legalization once again sparked (California’s Proposition 19 in the midterm elections and Time Magazine’s recent article “The United States of Amerijuana”), I realized how necessary the legalization of marijuana truly is.

Our former editor in chief, Michelle Hu ’10, wrote a column about marijuana, in which she lamented that our current society considered its legalization a laughing matter. Without a doubt, we have made much progress. In the recent midterm elections, California voted on its Proposition 19, which would legalize the recreational use of marijuana. And California was not the only state to deal with marijuana-related questions – voters in South Dakota rejected the legalization of medicinal marijuana, although 14 other states have legalized it over the past 15 years. The majority of voters in California rejected Proposition 19, but it is still noteworthy that the idea of legalizing marijuana, not only for medicinal purposes, even surfaced in the first place. This demonstrates the fact that a growing number of Americans are now realizing the war on drugs is essentially flawed.

Policy makers should consider at least the decriminalization of marijuana. Many Americans are unaware that marijuana offenses result in prison terms. The truth is, however, that more people are incarcerated today for marijuana-related crimes than ever before, and many such offenders are serving life sentences without a possibility of parole. It is completely absurd to consider the fact that the society that we live in punishes someone who sells marijuana more severely than someone who beats, rapes, or even murders another human being. If marijuana were legalized, or even decriminalized, police and court resources could be better directed toward more dangerous crimes.

In Eric Schlosser’s book, Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs, and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market, marijuana guru Ed Rosenthal is quoted for saying “they’ve made (marijuana laws) so brittle and one day they’re going to break.” No matter how many new prison cells are added to the system, people are not going to stop growing, smoking or selling marijuana. Instead, the massive marijuana black market is only going to be fueled further, and the criminals behind this black market will only gain more power.

Disputes over marijuana cannot be resolved through nonviolent means underground, such as lobbying or lawsuits, but usually have to be settled through violence. As Rosenthal predicts, prohibition of marijuana will eventually be repealed, and policy makers will realize the only logical conclusion is to tax the potentially lucrative crop.

“Potentially lucrative” might even be an understatement. Possible estimates for the cost of America’s annual marijuana crop range anywhere from $4 billion to $25 billion. To summarize the many marijuana statistics, legalizing marijuana would save the government $7.7 billion a year on prohibition enforcement expenditures. Prohibition also prevents the government from taxing marijuana in the first place, which would add billions to federal coffers for a variety of policy initiatives.

For example, Social Security payouts will eventually exceed income, and the system will therefore become bankrupt. Taxing marijuana could be a potential remedy to this unfortunate dilemma. In the context of California alone, taxing marijuana could have resulted in $1.4 billion, which would have been beneficial to the state’s current financial crisis.

Although marijuana legalization shows promise, it would be foolish to suggest that there are no negative ramifications. Despite marijuana’s relative lack of addictive qualities compared to alcohol and tobacco, it is still known to cause cognitive impairment and it is linked to the arrival of schizophrenia and depression. Also, legalization will undoubtedly lead to an overall increase in marijuana use.

Yet, the benefits still outweigh the costs. It seems, however, that politicians are the most unwilling to budge on the issue. Congressman Dan Burton once even said that “we must educate our children about drugs and impose tough new penalties on dealers,” shortly before his son was arrested while bringing eight pounds of marijuana from Texas to Indiana.

But with the recent defeat of Proposition 19, advocates of marijuana legalization are stronger than ever. The campaign has a much wider base of supporters compared with only two years ago, the media and the electorate are fiercely debating the issue and legalization advocates in California are already working on Proposition 19’s comeback plan for 2012.

We have already seen the repeal of prohibition once with the legalization of alcohol.

It’s about time for history to repeat itself.