KW+L Assignment

In today’s non opinionated fact oriented discussion we will see if marijuana should be Legal. Included in this essay we will discuss the prohibition, effect of marijuana and do specific ages and genders have alike opinions. What is marijuana? Marijuana also known as cannabis is a psychoactive drug primarily used for recreational purposes and sometimes used for medical, it gives the user a “high” which alters the thought process in the brain for a few hours sort of like alcohol although one can make an argument that alcohol has a stronger effect both do share some things in common such as driver impairment. Now i know what your thinking why is alcohol fine but if i use cannabis i can go to prison in many states for using. The simple answer to that is alcohol was illegal once but then crime skyrocketed for instance take a man who comes home after a long day at work and takes a drink, Thats fine nothing wrong here. But then comes the prohibition act and this man along with a large majority of the population is now a criminal so yes by those standards crime will sky rocket its like outlawing pepsi everybody does it. However “crime” is still high. The American justice system holds over 2.3 MILLION people in prison the over criminalization of drug use plays a enormous role in this astounding figure as drug offenses account as over half a million of people in prison.Police and prosecutors continue to hand out harsh punishments to people for nothing more than possession. This is unamerican the constitution was created to give each citizen liberty simply possessing a plant should not at all land you in jail if your not affecting anyone but yourself. after some research on the matter i came to what a believe to be a sensible solution would be threefold #1 to increase awareness of negative side affects #2 treat all infractions as you would treat someone with alcohol in their system and finally #3 to establish some type of minimum age to prevent children from using it as children cannot make a unbiased decision. A few last notes im left wondering after researching this why can a person vote and be drafted into the military but cannot have alcohol? How is a lockdown not in violation of our first amendment, govenors and mayors should be in jail it seems more than non violent drug offenders. and finally why do older people seem so opposed to cannabis? in particular women but then again women were behind the orignal prohibition act it seems. So what do you think? should it be legal or illegal and why?