Legalization of Marijuana Term Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Legalization of Marijuana - Term Paper ExampleAlthough marijuana is non legal in the Netherlands as is widely believed, it is openly tolerated as tryd by the fact that it washstand be both purchased and consumed in one of several Amsterdam coffee houses. The city is thus an modelling of the kind of anarchy opponents of legalization measures have warned would occur if the United States took a more than lenient approach. What the evidence suggests is that legalizing marijuana can introduce a great benefit to society. This evidence is well-known throughout the scientific, semipolitical and public arena including economics and social issues but it has yet to be acted upon.According to a traverse in The economist (Case for Legalization, 2001), concerns that a growing drug-using and dependent population would emerge if marijuana was made more available are false. Although the magazine acknowledges that the price of the drug is artificially high, it attributes this to the difficulti es involved in circumventing the law. The authors of this report demonstrate that it is only because of the high cost and the difficulty to obtain it that more individuals have not experimented with it. Instead, they become addicted, every physically or psychologically, to other, often more harmful yet legal substances such as prescription medications or intoxicant. To support their argument in favor of legalization even should the numbers of suspected users rise, the Economist article (Case for Legalization, 2001) draws on the theories of John Stuart Mill. Mills ideas were founded on the concept that adult citizens should have the remedy to make their own choices regarding whether or not to participate in activity as long as it does no harm to others. This is a founding theory that has been mostly ignored in decisions made regarding alcohol and tobacco, both of which have proven to directly cause significant harm to innocent others,