SHOULD MARIJUANA BE LEGALIZED OR NOT

Should marijuana be legalized or not?

Should marijuana be legalized or not?

Introduction

During the 1930s, Congress launched a campaign against marijuana distribution and use, and also consolidated the changes in drug legislation and enforcement that had swept the country during the first two decades of the twentieth century. By 1937, not only had all states prohibited the possession and sale of cannabis, but also the federal government passed the Marihuana Tax Act (Joy, 2007).

During a brief period in the early 1970s, the attitude toward the use of illegal drugs in the United States became more tolerant. However, by the beginning of the 1980s, intolerance prevailed once again. Between 1981 and 1989, drug use declined; the percentage of the population favoring legalization of marijuana fell; the percentage of the populace who believed that drug use was physically and/or psychologically harmful grew; the number of arrests on drug charges increased; the likelihood that a drug offender would be incarcerated increased; and the number of drug offenders who were imprisoned, as well as the ratio of drug offenders to all prisoners, increased dramatically (Huggins, 2006).

Discussion

It is particularly ironic that the 1933 repeal of the national prohibition against alcohol occurred simultaneously with the crusade to criminalize marijuana. The nation had begun to make sharp legal and cultural distinctions between and among various psychoactive substances (Fisher, 2007). From the 1920s through the 1960s, there were no serious challenges to the prevalent concept that criminal penalties should attach to immoral acts such as recreational drug use and the administration of narcotics to addicts.

Many critics reacted to what they regarded as the excesses of the new prohibitionist era. The late 1980s witnessed publication of a plethora of books and articles in favor of repealing drug prohibition. In spite of their agreement concerning the ills ...