Legalizing Marijuana

Introduction

The legality of marijuana has been the subject of debate and controversy for decades. Marijuana is illegal to consume, use, possess, cultivate, transfer or trade in most countries. Medicinal use of marijuana is legal in a number of countries, including Belgium, Canada, the Netherlands, Israel and 14 states of the United States. Marijuana supporters believe that marijuana should be legalized in the following reasons: Marijuana use has positive attributes; marijuana is safer than any chemical drugs and alcohol, and sell marijuana would help American's economy out of the debt by a billion dollars annually.

While there is still a debate on the harm caused by marijuana, the universal tendency of studies is considered much less harmful than alcohol and snuff and that has both highly recommended for health. No comparison with hard drugs. Marijuana is safer than any form of drugs and alcohol. Marijuana has proved that it is not an addict unlike tobacco and alcohol. Marijuana has less toxic and it is not a lethal drug. For example, tobacco smokeless users have been chewing tobacco for years and they are having a difficult time to quit doing it because of its nicotine that made them craving to it.

Impact of Leisure Activities on Marijuana Legalization

Several researchers investigated the effects of different time use patterns including unstructured activities on adolescent substance use and deviant behavior from perspectives other than the routine activity approach. The majority of these studies employed factor analyses to identify different time use patterns. However, it should be noted that conceptual or factor analyzed classification of activities tends to mesh with the conceptualized time use patterns within studies that adopted the routine activity perspective. Some of the activities that tend to produce high impact on the marijuana legalization (Barnes, 26).

Unstructured Activities Impact

Unstructured activities generally have been conceptualized as activities that take place out of school settings such as in the after school hours and in the evenings without the supervision of adults. Some researchers made a distinction between structured and unstructured activities based on whether time is spent in pro-social or recreational ways. Accordingly, they conceptually treated time use factors that are spent with friends in settings without direct supervision and in non pro-social ways as unstructured activities. The findings of these studies also tend to attest the findings of the studies that drew on the routine activity perspective (Hall, Schiefelbein, 198). The researcher known as Hawdon in 1999 conducted a study from the perspective of social control theory and found that the recreational time use pattern significantly and positively predicted multiple drug use and larceny theft among adolescents. In this study, recreational pattern was an index variable composed of leisure activities of going to parties, going out in the evenings, visiting friends, and riding for fun, the variables which represent the unstructured and unsupervised socializing with peer's time use pattern within the routine activity perspective. Hawdon's theoretical reasoning was based on the visibility, referring to degree to which activities are likely to occur in the presence of authority ...