The Reasons Marijuana Should Be Legalized, But Never Will Be

After our discussion yesterday, I started thinking about what I honestly think about legalizing marijuana. I am pretty familiar to both sides of the argument. I know some successful, rational individuals who are all for the legalization of the notorious pot plant. Some of them illegally partake in smoking it daily. Others use it occassionally, when it is easily available or offered to them. I also know two people who have used medical marijuana. The arguments these people have offered to me are such.

A) Medically, they can find no research to suggest that smoking marijuana on a regular basis has any detrimental effects to your health other than weakened alveoli stimulus response. To be honest, that is a big problem. I do not particularly like the thought of my lungs not reacting properly to the oxygen and air intake. No one is making the claim that it does nothing detrimental to the body. It is just not nearly as detrimental as tobacco.

B) There have been beneficial effects on some people's bodies. For this argument, it is good to note that not every case of trying to use medical marijuana is going to produce positive effects, just as certain antidepressants, zoloft, prozac, etc. work on certain people, where others, there are no positive results. Secondly, for this argument it is important to note that there has been no research to suggest that marijuana cures any type of medical problem. People who have used it medically and have had results do not use it for a cure, but as a treatment of symptoms. If a person has cancer, smoking does not CURE the cancer. In some cases, it has contributed to the cancer going into to remission, but it is not a cure. In other cases, such as cerebral palsy, it can contribute to bringing back motor funtion while you are high, but it does not CURE the cerebral palsy. Because medical marijuana treats symptoms, it ethically should be treated as any other foreign substance we put into our bodies to treat symptoms.

C) The effects of being high leave an individual more functional than the effects of being drunk. This argument to me is legitimate in some cases, but not for everyone. In the same manner that an excessive amount of alcohol affects certain people differently, (some become violent, some become loud, some become quiet, etc) smoking marijuana affects certain people differently. However, from personal experience, people who are wasted seem to lose control of motor functions and cognition and continue to lose more control the more they drink. People who are stoned seem to lose the ability to focus, and the more they smoke, the less they are able to focus. While not being able to focus is an effect that I personally would not want, I would prefer it over losing my entire cognition. Neither substance abuse user should be driving under the influence, but if I had to choose one of the two users to drive, it would for sure be the pot smoker.

All three of those arguments have been presented to me over the course of my life, but my personal take on it does not deal with the effects of using it but the reasons for using it. I think that most of us would agree that drinking alcohol in moderation is not unethical. It becomes unethical, however, when people do not use moderation, but in fact, get shwasty. The degree of morality depends, however, on the intent. Getting drunk unintentionally is a venial sin, yet attempting to get drunk and succeeding could be considered a mortal sin. Therefore, the reason that it would be unethical to get drunk is because you are using it as an escape from reality, using it as way to change your rationale toward the world, or using it to pretend the problems or circumstances you have are not there any more. Marijuana, in the same sense is not inherently unethical, but it depends on the reasons you are using it. The fact that there are THC specific receptors in our brains rasies the question about how unethical it can actually be if we are structured to recieve it. However, I will comment that the purpose to smoking marijuana is normally to get high. I know some people who use it to "take the edge off", but the large majority of pot users I know smoke solely to get high. There are different levels of high, but the minimum that most people shoot for is beyond buzzed, the marijuanic equivalent to "tipsy".

Furthermore, the reason that marijuana will never be legalized is not due to any ethical debate, but to the fact that it can not be regulated (as far as we know). When someone is drunk, they can be breathalized. There is a scale and a standard that enforcers can use to determine what is illegal and what isn't. With marijuana, there is no test that can determine whether you are high right now or you were high three weeks ago. When there is THC in your system, it stays there anywhere from 2 to 4 weeks. Therefore, regulating "public drunkeness" pertaining to marijuana is, for the moment, unattainable, and therefore, marijuana will continue to be illegal.