Why Marijuana Use Should Not be Legalized?

Marijuana has long been known as one of the most popular drug uses. While the pros and cons of utilizing marijuana as a recreational substance remain controversial, it would be more advantageous for not legalizing this drug legal under the law enforcement. To some extent, it could not be denied that legitimatizing marijuana trade is beneficial for taxation purpose. However, marijuana use is harmful to public health physiologically and psychologically, therefore, this indirectly causes degradation in social work efficiency. Besides, the following social consequences resulting from legalizing marijuana use may arise far beyond recognition.

On the one hand, legalizing marijuana trade provides certain economics benefits. According to McKinney (2008), “marijuana legalization could create $132 billion in federal tax revenue and inject over a million jobs into the U.S. labor market by 2025 if it becomes legal nationwide”. It is quite clear that in addition to raising taxation, marijuana legalization could create more job opportunities. Szarflaski and Sirven (2017) suggest that the increased tax revenue from marijuana legalization comes with the decreased enforcement costs. These costs fall into three buckets: establishing an enforcement system, additional expenses incurred by the existing agencies, and changing management (McKinney, 2008). Nonetheless, like other commerce, whether this category of business could gain any benefit depends on how it is administered. In other words, legalizing marijuana trade hardly accompanies with any definite payback. Therefore, the huge amount of profit generated from trading marijuana seems to decline in certain degrees, when the distinction between theory and practice is clearly separated.

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On the other hand, it is without doubt that marijuana severely does harm to public health, as Rogeberg (2018) illustrates in his recent work that “no economic or social benefits could justify any reduction in health”. Even though marijuana is not considered the most dangerous drug among the other commonly abused ones, yet it still results in certain negative health effects, on every individual regardless of gender, age or the amount of drug consumed. Those take place bilaterally in both mental and physical conditions. Physiologically, marijuana abuse impairs human’s common abilities, for instance, “important short-term effects of marijuana use on psychomotor performance and cognition that could lead to more on-the-job accidents, including impairments in memory function, information processing, hand-eye coordination, and reaction times' (Anderson, Rees & Tekin, 2018). In terms of psychological effects, consuming a proper amount of marijuana gradually leads to the deterioration of “short-term memory, artificial euphoria, calmness, or (in high dose) anxiety or paranoia”, as shown in recent research (Stimson, 2010). Concerning pregnant women, “there have been several studies reporting adverse fetal outcomes with marijuana use, including lower birthweight babies” (Chabarria, Racusin, Antony, Kahr, Suter, Mastrobattista & Aagaard, 2016). Regarding adolescents, those who are accessible to early marijuana use may deliver lower school performance as this drug abuse causes degradation in short-term memory and reduction in motivation (Estoup & Moise-Campbell & Varma & Stewart, 2016). In addition, youngsters hardly consider marijuana use risky, therefore, when connecting to drug relapse rates, it would be a difficulty maintaining sobriety (Hopfer, 2014). Furthermore, the scenario of marijuana legalization on a state scale, or even global scale does highlight the issue of declined work efficiency since public health is severely damaged. Adults’ health, in other words, the main labour source, would undoubtedly face risk. Although remaining sober during work hours, certain jobs such as police officers, airline pilots, and machine operators if consume marijuana regularly may deal with longterm cognitive deficiency, which directly leads to sapping productivity, therefore, placing countless people in danger (Stimson, 2010). Marijuana use also leads to educational underachievement, cognitive impairment, reduced life satisfaction, along with chronic bronchitis, risk of psychosis disorder, and addiction (Volkow, Compton & Weiss, 2014).

Another factor regarding marijuana legalization’s negative impacts is that the ensuing social consequences outweigh those of economics benefits, in other words, “one possible explanation of this is that individuals focus on the immediate beneficial consequences of marijuana use while disregarding or discounting the future harmful consequences” (Lewis, Litt, King, Garcia, Waldron & Lee, 2018). In fact, “legal marijuana in North America was estimated to be a nearly $10 billion industry in 2017” (McKinney, 2018), however, it is doubtful whether this huge amount of money could counterbalance those negative outcomes of public health, increasing demand for other more hazardous substances, higher percentage of drug-related criminals, escalating violence, and juvenile delinquency. Law enforcement is only applied for marijuana use, as it is called “marijuana legalization”. Marijuana is also recognized as the gateway drug to other more addictive ones, therefore, harsh governmental policies hardly impose any efficiency on the others. Stimson (2010) suggests that “the vast majority of defendants arrested for violent crimes test positive for other illegal drugs, including marijuana”. For crime rates, though in fact legalizing marijuana use does reduce the number of criminals concerning drug dealing and drug using, the crimes resulted from aggressive behavior, theft and violence are predicted to increase, reversely. “A 200 percent increase in robberies, a 52.2 percent increase in burglaries, a 57.1 percent increase in aggravated assault, and a 130.8 percent increase in burglaries from automobiles as shown in police report” (Stimson, 2010). There is also a high chance for escalating tension associating with contradictory policies towards marijuana legalization within a nation’s boundary, for example, several states of America have legalized marijuana use while the others still maintain considering this drug illegal. Regarding juvenile delinquency, since marijuana use is publicly legalized, there is no doubt that young people would consume it. According to Oetzel & Duran (2004), “adolescents are experiencing interpersonal, health, and disciplinary consequences, resulting in increased juvenile delinquency, dropout rates, interpersonal, and health problems”. Moreover, even if law enforcement imposes either a limit or other controls towards the individual safe amount of marijuana consumed, specifically on youngsters, these deterrence effects would gradually disappear as children are born and nurtured, then growing up in a marijuana legalized society.

All in all, everything goes with its advantages as well as disadvantages, and so does marijuana legalization. Although marijuana commerce could raise tax revenue and create more jobs, however, this may require a complex procedure to be verified thoroughly on a nationwide scale. Furthermore, the following negative consequences of public health and social life resulted from legalizing marijuana use could outburst inconceivably in the long run, as Stimson (2010) has suggested that “legalizing this drug use would serve little purpose other than to worsen the state’s drug problems - addiction, violence, disorder, and death”. Therefore, marijuana legalization should be put under harsh control, in some cases, completely prohibited.

Reference List

1. Anderson, D., Rees, D., Tekin, E. (2018). Medical marijuana laws and workplace fatalities in the United States. International Journal of Drug Policy, 60, 33-39. Retrieved from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0955395918301968
2. Chabarria, K., Racusin, D., Antony, K., Kahr, M., Suter, M., Mastrobattista, J., Aagaard, K. (2016). Marijuana use and its effects in pregnancy. American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, 215 (4), 506.e1 - 506.e7. Retrieved from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0002937816302629
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