Many consider the War on Drugs a vicious feedback loop, but we can’t count on it ending anytime soon. However, if the White House would like to earn some extra cash while they attempt to combat the dangerous drug cartels lurking south of the border, they would be wise to legalize marijuana at the federal level.
It’s not like there isn’t public support for the legislation, either. To be precise, 51 percent of Americans are in support of legalizing the substance federally. In 2011, the stats were juxtaposed: 51 percent opposed legalization.
But then the New Year unleashed the media hounds that were happy to report on the staggering $5 million of recreational marijuana sales revenue generated in week one of Colorado’s legalization. Nearly two months removed and salivation over the economic benefits that some have been touting for decades is reaching feverish levels.
It certainly helps that over 500 economists, including the famed Milton Friedman, signed an open letter outlining the economic benefits of marijuana legalization: $7.7 billion saved in state and federal expenditures and $2.2 billion in tax revenue. Furthermore, banks are now accepting the money the marijuana dispensaries make, after a month or so of tentativeness regarding how the feds might potentially punish them for banking them.
To be clear, marijuana is becoming a mainstay of the economy in the states that have legalized it. Of course, the cash incentives aren’t enough to sway those that are convinced the drug is harmful enough to be classed with heroin, methamphetamines and other substances of that nature.
Thankfully, there are some doctors who would like to have a word with those folks. The Lancet, the world’s leading general medical journal, released an informative graph charting the harm — to self and to others — caused by common drugs. Atop the list, to little surprise, is alcohol, followed by heroine, crack cocaine, methamphetamines, cocaine, tobacco, amphetamines and then cannabis.
According to the Lancet’s metrics, alcohol earned a “harm rating” of 73. Marijuana clocked in at a rating of roughly 21. I’ll save you the trouble; according to doctors, marijuana is less than a third as dangerous as alcohol.
Alcohol dwarfs marijuana’s harmfulness, but we’re still smothered with advertisement after advertisement for beer and liquor while cannabis has suffered from decades of stigma and negative connotations.
Perhaps it’s just an older generation’s glacial rate of adaptation from antique ideologies, or maybe it’s a dangerously pervasive trend of misinformation regarding marijuana. Harold and Kumar aren’t exactly helping the second green movement’s cause — that’s for sure. Those counterpoints are low-hanging fruit and made of straw. Above all, they’re slowing down the rate of beneficial progress.
The medical benefits of marijuana are borderline obvious now. The substance is a proven appetite stimulant, antiemetic and antispasmodic, and it has some analgesic effect. Denying marijuana as a medical tool is denying millions of people of a viable, and likely more affordable, medicine. As studies improve in both volume and quality, more applications will be discovered.
Maybe these arguments are low-hanging fruits, too. Then again, there’s an overwhelming number of incentives to legalizing marijuana. All I can suggest is for everyone to educate themselves on the benefits and dangers of marijuana and compare them to substances already deemed legal and that you may already consume yourself.
It is cognitively disingenuous and factually ignorant to dismiss marijuana as a viable market good while approving of both alcohol and tobacco, substances proven to be more harmful. Legalizing marijuana at the federal level is the intelligent decision, and it’s the right one.