Marijuana Paper

Legalization of Marijuana Some people say that marijuana is a helpful medicine in many ways. They say it will relax you, calm you down, and make one feel very good. It is also said that it is not as harmful or dangerous as alcohol and other gateway drugs, and that is some of the reasons why many people want to legalize marijuana. Marijuana should stay illegal in the United States because if it is made legal, more and more people will smoke it, which will cause negative effects on health and families.If marijuana is made legal, people will think smoking marijuana is something that they can do every single day at any given time, which will increase drug use. People will smoke marijuana without getting in trouble or getting arrested. With it being legal, there will also be a lot easier way to buy it, and it will also be a lot cheaper to buy. These same things took place when alcohol was made legal. Drug dealers will be able to grow marijuana without getting in any kind of trouble, and i n return, will be able to make a large profit off of it.It is said in Legalizing Marijuana, â€Å"Van Deventer, a news reporter, described how he and his friends used drugs casually for a while. He felt like he was growing closer to addiction. But buying illegal drugs was not easy. Van Deventer and his friends feared being arrested. They worried about undercover cops posing as drugs dealers, who often sold them fake drugs. † (Legalizing Drugs 67) It is also said in this book that Van Deventer and his friends stopped using drugs when it was illegal, because they did not want to get arrested.If drugs were legal at this time, Van Deventer and his buddies would use drugs casually once again. The increasing drug use will eventually lead to many health effects in the drug users. People who are depressed use marijuana because they think that if they use it, it will calm them down, and in return get them out of the depressed mood they were in. Studies show that this is not true, beca use marijuana is shown to worsen a person’s depression problem. There are also many other negative health effects to marijuana users including: respiratory illness, lung infections, and cancer of the lungs, mouth, throat, and esophagus.It is shown that frequent marijuana users have a higher risk of getting these different types of cancer than smokers are. It is said that after just a minute or two of smoking marijuana, the marijuana user’s heart rate increases and their blood pressure decreases as well. When your blood pressure drops and your heart rate increases, researchers found that the user has a four time higher chance of having a heart attack within the first hour of using marijuana.Smoking marijuana can also, in some cases, make a frequent user of marijuana gain a major amount of weight. Marijuana users have said that they get the â€Å"munchies† while high which makes them want to eat large amounts of food which, in return can make them gain weight. If marijuana is made legal, it would also make a negative effect on the user’s family and home life. If a parent of a young teen uses this marijuana in front of their child, it will make the child want to do the same thing as their parent or parents.Parents around the world are role models to their kids and the kids want to do what their parents do in many ways. If a child sees his or her parent getting high, it will make the child want to do the same thing. Marijuana affects teens and their ability to learn and concentrate in school. It will cause them to make bad choices like skipping school to go out and smoke with all of their buddies. When parents use this drug, it will possibly cause them to neglect or abuse their children. If marijuana stays illegal, these negative effects will lessen.Van Deventer says in Legalizing Drugs, â€Å"The more barriers there are (cops or the hassle or the fear of dying from an overdose) the less likely you are to get addicted. † (Legaliz ing Drugs 68) He is trying to state that if marijuana stays illegal, there will be many more consequences if one smokes or gets caught smoking. If it was legal, than the fear of addiction and getting hassled by the cops for it would not be there. So why would this country want to take a risk of legalizing this drug? It will only give teens and parents bad ideas to teens, parents, and families.Increased drug use, negative health effects, and negative effects on families are all the negative outcomes of legalizing marijuana. So legalizing marijuana will put negative effects on families and it will make many people make man bad choices. Works Cited Goldstein, J Margaret. Legalizing Drugs: Crime Stopper or Social Risk. Twenty First Century Books. Colorado. Outline I. Introduction: Negative effects on family, health, and major increase in drug use II. Increased use in marijuana use III. Negative effects on health related issues IV. Negative effects on family and home life