The issue on legalizing marjiana

The concept of marijuana legalization has gone in and knocked out(p) of vogue over the past 20 years, as some(prenominal) states, have decriminalized its self-denial and use. Some describe the cause of decriminalisation in the 1970s as a wave of bailable liberalism. This is hardly the case, however.

In the early 1970s, a presidential commission chaired by the former Republican governor of Pennsylvania, Raymond P. Schafer, c entirelyed for federal decriminalization and eventual(prenominal) legalization, regulation, and control of marijuana (National Commission on Marihuana and medicine Abuse, 1972). The commission concluded that marijuana should be decriminalized. In 1977, Senator Jacob Javits and deterrent example Edward Koch introduced a bill to federally decriminalize marijuana.

Today, government surveys see the number of regular marijuana users at about 11.8 one million million (NIDA, 1988). The cost of pursuing and punishing 11.8 million marijuana users, if that is all there are, would be enormous, both financially and societal.

The alternatives include: (1) underwrite the present system of catching a few and qualification examples of them; (2) fully decriminalize the possession and use of marijuana in private by adults, as 11 states have move to do; or (3) legalize, regulate, and control marijuana, a means that DEA administrative Law Judge Francis Young called the safest therapeutically active substance known to man (Young, 1988).

Another option, actually only an expansion of the up-to-the-minute system, would mean arresting, prosecuting, and punishing a significant percentage of the estimated 11.8 million regular marijuana offenders. In 1988, law enforcement authorities do 1,155,200 criminal arrests for all drug offenses (FBI, 1989). Of these, more than 324,000 arrests were for simple possession of marijuana (FBI, 1989).

It is unreasonable to increase by 12 generation the number of drug arrests made annually, and add the proportionate nub of resources to the criminal justice system, simply to crack down on...

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