Marijuana

Abstract

The goal of this research is to briefly summarize the history of drug policy in the United States, to then attempt a better understanding of the controversial issue of marijuana legalization, and finally to see how the current drug control policy, meant to protect or educate, influences American youth. The United States have had a great fluctuation over history concerning the way drugs were viewed and drug policies.

Marijuana

Introduction

Marijuana (grass colloquially) is the dried resin containing female inflorescences and leaves of the hemp plant, which as a drug to be consumed. In addition to the hashish and hashish oil is a form of cannabis drugs. The flowers of the cannabis are called trichomes on the leaf surface, where the plant produces the cannabinoid-containing resin. The main active ingredient contained in the resin is the terpenoid tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). Other cannabinoids in significant measure are cannabidiol (CBD) and cannabinol (CBN), along with several hundred other occurring substances.

The goal of this research is to briefly summarize the history of drug policy in the United States, to then attempt a better understanding of the controversial issue of marijuana legalization, and finally to see how the current drug control policy, meant to protect or educate, influences American youth.

Literature Review

Drugs Policies

The United States have had a great fluctuation over history concerning the way drugs were viewed and drug policies. The social and legislative situation of drugs evolved up to the present days by fluctuating towards the extremes in most cases, but in the present it seems to have arrived in a balance point which will in great part determine the future of the drug policy. The social component is a key part of this process, as the public is not only influenced by the drug policy but influences it in turn by its opinion of drugs, which is a factor to be considered when thinking about the future and influence on upcoming generations.

The drug policy in the United States has greatly fluctuated over its history, beginning with the 19 century when pharmaceutical and technological advances permitted the creation and wide distribution of unregulated and even unnamed “drugs”. Over time, American drug policy evolved to different stages, in sometimes harsher and sometimes more lenient.

Drug policies throughout the world evolve accordingly to societal and moral views on what is inacceptable or wrong. American drug policy was no exception as it went from acceptance to prohibition in an incessant series of changes, each time shifting to an extreme. Before observing the history of American drug policy, however, one must ponder on the meaning of the term “drugs”.

A standard definition of drugs would be “a chemical substance that, when taken into the body, alters the structure and functioning of the body in some way, excluding those nutrients considered to be related to normal functioning”.

Bureau of Narcotics

Harry J. Anslinger started in 1930 together with the publisher William Randolph Hearst, a nationwide campaign against the depicted as murderous drug plant, which was now called "marijuana" instead of "Hemp" ...