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What side of the argument do you agree with?

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What side of the argument do you agree with?

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I do think marijuana should be legalized in the states. I believe so because it would reduce many problematic factors such as encourage users to drop the use of alcohol and tobacco which are the two most damaging drugs. Legalizing recreational marijuana would also move the distribution of weed to adult use only stores, keeping the drugs away from younger kids and away from the streets. And lastly, with no shocker, recreational marijuana does benefit certain problems for certain people. This means it helps people with anxiety, people who experience chronic pain from certain illnesses and even help control epileptic seizures.

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Are you one of the almost 57 million Americans living in a state that's voting on marijuana legalization this Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2016? Your vote YES may help end the criminality of marijuana for over one out of six Americans, bringing the total to almost one out of four Americans who will live in a legal state.

Here are the ten best reasons to help convince your friends and family to do the right thing and vote YES on legalization:

1) Legalized Marijuana is Safer than Alcohol and Tobacco

How did we end up in a society where the two most damaging drugs-alcohol and tobacco-are the two legal ones? There are over a half-million deaths annually from those two substances. They also lead to countless illnesses and injuries that affect society in health-care costs, lost productivity, and law-enforcement expenses.

Marijuana is non-toxic and has never caused a fatal overdose in over 7,000 years of recorded human use. Its greatest harm is the arrest, incarceration, and lifelong hurdles created by prohibition. Opponents worry about "putting a third legal drug on the menu," as if marijuana isn't already the third-most popular drug used in America. It's already on the menu; you just have to commit a crime to order it.

2) Marijuana Prohibition is a Costly Failure

Next year is the 80 th anniversary of the Marihuana Tax Act, our first nationwide attempt to suppress pot smoking. Back then, maybe a few hundred thousand people nationwide were "smoking reefers". Today, it's more likely than not that someone under age 50 has tried pot and there are over 30 million Americans consuming cannabis on a regular basis-whether it is "on the menu" or not.

The costs of this counter-productive prohibition are staggering. Since President Nixon declared a war on drugs, over 25 million Americans have been arrested for marijuana violations, costing us over $1 trillion to prosecute. But in the four states that have legalized, marijuana arrests have plummeted, crime has decreased, and youth use hasn't budged.

3) Marijuana Prohibition Funds Gangs, Cartels, & Terrorists

The drug trade has long been a source of income for organized crime. But now that four states have legalized marijuana; their domestic product is beating imported Mexican marijuana in both price and quality. Mexican farmers growing for the vicious violent drug cartels have seen their returns drop from $100 per kilo to under $25.

Legalization isn't going to put the cartels out of business-they're criminals who will turn to other crimes for their funding. But we can take from them the market for the most widely-used drug and shrink their customer base substantially.

Heres another way to look at it: Why should we continue to give business opportunities to violent criminals who don't pay taxes and follow no regulations?

4) Marijuana Prohibition Hurts Youth & Minorities Most

America is coming to grips with institutional racism in our criminal-justice system. Marijuana prohibition has been a prime factor in fueling that racism. African-Americans are four times more likely than whites to be arrested for marijuana violations, even though they use and sell marijuana at about the same rates.

Marijuana prohibition sets up an incentive for police to make easy arrests and reap forfeiture and drug grant dollars. This, in turn, leads police to concentrate on minority neighborhoods where pot smokers are more easily caught and have fewer resources to fight the charges. This contributes to the cycle of distrust between minority communities and the police. Legalization won't fix bad racist cops, but it will provide them far less opportunity to act on their racism.

5) Legalized Marijuana Protects Kids Better Than Prohibition

For the past forty years, the Monitoring the Future survey has asked high school seniors how easy it would be for them to get a bag of pot. For forty years, the answer has consistently been between 80 to 91 percent of them claiming access to marijuana was either "easy" or "fairly easy." That's because weed dealers don't check ID and don't lose a license if they're caught selling to a kid.

Nothing's ever going to stop a determined kid from finding a joint, any more than kids today aren't completely stopped from accessing alcohol and tobacco. But with those drugs, somewhere along the line a corrupt adult had to be involved. Now, kids sell weed to other kids. Legalization moves weed sales into secure, adults-only stores and reduces the profit potential for illegal sales. (When's the last time you saw a high school tequila dealer?) Last year, with four legalized states, was the first year ever that "easy" access to weed for 12 th graders dropped below 80 percent.

6) Legalized Marijuana is a Safe Therapeutic Supplement

While half the states have initiated protections for medical use of marijuana, that doesn't legalize the use of marijuana by patients. Even in California, where nearly anybody can get a medical marijuana recommendation and possession of less than an ounce is just a $100 ticket, there are still over 2,000 people a year who go to jail for marijuana alone, serving an average of over five months in a cage.

That's because doctor's visits and medical cards cost money; it costs upwards of $400 in some states to qualify and register for a medical marijuana card. Why should a disabled person in poverty or a sick person suffering a condition not covered by law be treated as a criminal for using an herb safer than over-the-counter aspirin or cough syrup?

7) Legalized Marijuana Replaces Toxic, Addictive Pharmaceuticals

America is suffering from an opioid overdose epidemic. Legal pharmaceutical drugs kill more people annually than all illegal drugs combined. Marijuana is an herb one can grow at little cost and use to replace over 17 popular pharmaceutical medications. Legalizing marijuana will literally save the lives of countless patients.

The pharmaceutical industry knows this. That's why Big Pharma has been funding anti-pot campaigns. This election, one of them, Insys Pharmaceuticals, has donated a half-million dollars to defeat legalization in Arizona. They're a maker of Fentanyl, the opioid painkiller that took Prince's life and is 100 times more powerful that heroin, and are seeking patents on synthetic cannabinoid drugs they're researching.

8) Legalized Marijuana Opens the Possibilities of Industrial Hemp

The demonization of marijuana is so entrenched in America that we even ban the non-psychoactive variety known as industrial hemp. We are one of the few countries in the world engaged in the lunacy of banning a plant because it looks like one that gets you high.

It's a little like banning powdered sugar because it resembles cocaine!

While many states have passed laws allowing for industrial hemp cultivation and the federal government has passed laws allowing that to happen, these are all work-arounds for a crop that our Founding Fathers grew freely and copiously. Marijuana legalization will help open up the uses of hemp from food to fuel, fiber to medicine, building material to revolutionary energy technologies and more.

9) Legalized Marijuana Raises Millions in New Tax Revenue

Legalization doesn't invent marijuana; it just recognizes that it is a popular commodity that should be taxed and regulated like all other commodities. The market for marijuana is never going to go away; we can only determine who controls most of it-taxpaying, job-creating, law-abiding businesses, or murderous, police-corrupting, criminal cartels.

Prohibition doesn't control marijuana-prohibition is the absence of control. States under prohibition gain nothing from it and spend money, time, and resources enforcing it. The four states that have legalized marijuana have already reaped over $200 million in combined tax revenue, while saving money in the police department, courts, prisons, parole and probation offices, and other agencies that are burdened by pot prosecutions.

10) Legalized Marijuana Works!

It's not 2009 anymore. Legalization of marijuana isn't some hypothetical policy proposal-we've done it already in four other states. We had some initial difficulties concerning kids and edibles, but those have been addressed through education, labeling, and packaging changes the newly-legalizing states will adopt as well. Meanwhile, the older folks that legalization was intended for have increased their use substantially.

But despite putting legal marijuana "on the menu," the roads are safer than ever, overall driving fatalities are down, workplace productivity is up, problematic dependence on marijuana is unchanged, and millions of dollars in tax revenue are rolling in. In Colorado alone, legalization has created over 18,000 jobs and contributed over $2.5 billion to the state economy.

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Please, share this list via Twitter or Facebook with any friends who are on the fence or need the facts about Tuesday's vote. For all of Russ Belville's writing, click here.

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The Top 10 Reasons to Vote Yes on Marijuana Legalization · High Times

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Are you one of the almost 57 million Americans living in a state that's voting on marijuana legalization this Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2016? Your vote YES may help end the criminality of marijuana for over one out of six Americans, bringing the total to almost one out of four Americans who will live in a ...

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What are the main points for this to remain a state issue? a federal issue?

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What are the main points for this to remain a state issue? a federal issue?

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- Marijuana is classified as a Schedule 1 drug which is the strictest category in the scheduling system. This means they have high abuse potential and severe safety concerns.
- In October of 2009, the Obama Administration sent a memo to federal prosecutors encouraging them not to prosecute people who distribute marijuana for medical purposes in accordance with state law.

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national conference of state legislatures

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Find out the latest state legislative activity in regards to medical marijuana.

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What is the definition of Federalism?

How did the use of recreational marijuana become an issue of Federalism?

What are the main points for this to remain a state issue? a federal issue?

Analysis- What side of the argument do you most agree with? Defend your argument with facts from your research.

Links

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How did the use of recreational marijuana become an issue of federalism?

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How did the use of recreational marijuana become an issue of federalism?

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The use of recreational marijuana became an issue for federalism because it is still considered a violation under federal law, even if a state legalizes it or not. Banks cannot support big marijuana businesses because it is a federal crime.

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Last week White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer predicted "greater enforcement" of the federal ban on marijuana in the eight states that have legalized the drug for recreational use. This week Attorney General Jeff Sessions, an old-fashioned drug warrior who thinks "good people don't smoke marijuana," seemed to confirm Spicer's warning, telling reporters, "We're going to look at it...and try to adopt responsible policies."

If those "responsible policies" involve legal action aimed at shutting down state-licensed marijuana businesses, they will be contrary to public opinion, President Trump's campaign promises, and Sessions' own avowed support for federalism. As most Republicans seem to recognize, attempts to force marijuana prohibition on states that have opted out of it are inconsistent with the decentralized system of government established by the Constitution.

According to a recent Quinnipiac University survey, 59 percent of Americans think marijuana "should be made legal in the United States," while 71 percent "oppose the government enforcing federal laws against marijuana in states that have already legalized medical or recreational marijuana." Among Republicans, only 35 percent favored legalization, but 55 percent opposed federal interference with it.

Last April a CBS News poll found even stronger Republican opposition to federal meddling. Asked if "laws regarding whether the use of marijuana is legal" should be "determined by the federal government" or "left to each individual state government to decide," 70 percent of Republicans said the latter, compared to 55 percent of Democrats (who as usual were more likely to favor legalization). These results suggest many conservatives, whatever they think of marijuana, take seriously their commitment to federalism, which Trump also claims to support.

At the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2015, Trump said he favored medical marijuana but had concerns about broader legalization, a decision he nevertheless said should be left to the states. "In terms of marijuana and legalization," he said at a 2015 rally in Nevada, "I think that should be a state issue, state by state."

Sessions, a former Alabama senator, also claims to believe in federalism. After the death of William Rehnquist in 2005, Sessions gave a floor speech in which he praised the chief justice for "reestablish[ing] a respect for state law and state sovereignty." Sessions noted that the federal government, under its authority to regulate interstate commerce, "has broad power, but there are limits to the reach of the Commerce Clause."

When it comes to marijuana, however, Sessions has little patience for those limits. "It does remain a violation of federal law to distribute marijuana throughout any place in the United States," he observed on Monday, "whether a state legalizes it or not."

In 2005 the Supreme Court upheld continued enforcement of the federal ban on marijuana in states that have legalized the drug. But the Court did so based on a very broad reading of the Commerce Clause-the sort of interpretation that usually irks conservative constitutionalists.

The case involved homegrown marijuana used by patients in states that recognize the plant as a medicine. "If Congress can regulate this under the Commerce Clause," observed dissenting Justice Clarence Thomas, "then it can regulate virtually anything-and the Federal Government is no longer one of limited and enumerated powers."

In relying on an understanding of the Commerce Clause that lets Congress do pretty much whatever it wants, Sessions outdoes one of the most famous anti-marijuana crusaders in U.S. history. Harry Anslinger, head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics from 1930 to 1962, pushed states to ban marijuana by claiming the plant turned people into rapists and murderers.

But even Anslinger did not go so far as to claim the federal government had the authority to impose marijuana prohibition on recalcitrant states. "There are no Federal laws on the growth or use of marijuana," The New York Times reported in 1931. "Mr. Anslinger said the government under the Constitution cannot dictate what may be grown within individual States."
© Copyright 2017 by Creators Syndicate Inc.

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Last week White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer predicted "greater enforcement" of the federal ban on marijuana in the eight states that have legalized the drug for recreational use. This week Attorney General Jeff Sessions, an old-fashioned drug warrior who thinks "good people don't smoke marijuana," seemed to confirm Spicer's warning, telling reporters, "We're going to look at it...and try to adopt responsible policies."

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Federalism is a system of government in which entities such as states or provinces share power with a national government. The United States government functions according to the principles of federalism.