The “War on Drugs” has been raging for nearly 50 years in the United States and a great deal has been said by both sides of the argument about whether marijuana is safe to use. In 1937 a short movie, “Reefer Madness” was produced and shown in classrooms nationwide for nearly two decades. The movie depicted people smoking pot and hallucinating, going into convulsions and committing violent acts and no thought was ever given by the “educators” showing this movie to young minds, many of whom are now our nation´s leaders, this movie that was so obviously untrue. The makers of this film no doubt had the best intentions in mind when they produced it but using scare tactics and misinformation seldom works.
One of the best arguments opponents to legalization of marijuana use is that smoking pot damages the lungs. The facts however are quite the opposite. According to the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) recently conducted a study that found that marijuana smokers who smoke one marijuana cigarette a day for seven years or one a week for twenty years, will suffer no harmful effects to their lungs, and this is true even considering that marijuana smokers draw much deeper and keep the smoke in their lungs much longer than cigarette smokers and while marijuana does have tar, there is no nicotine,which is the substance that causes addiction and considerable lung damage in cigarette smokers.
The study measured lung function on a variety of individuals, a total of 5,100, all having differing smoking habits, over a period of 20 years. The same individuals were used throughout the entire study. The study´s co-author, Dr. Stefan Kertesz was very clear when he said that any decision about whether or not to use marijuana, whether for medical or recreational purposes, should not be made based on myths about the substance causing lung damage. Dr. Kertesz said “It’s not a decision about lung health, it’s all the other issues: the risk of addiction, an increase in the chance of having accidents and social functioning.” But with no real evidence of addiction and the fact that many recreational substances, such as alcohol which is legal, can impair social functioning. The study also included cigarette smokers, for comparison purposes, and found that, unlike marijuana smokers, the scores on lung function dropped drastically on cigarette smokers. They also discovered that pot smokers who smoked a joint a day for seven years actually experienced greater lung capacity.
America has the largest percentage of its people either in prison or on some form of parole or probation and the numbers are climbing rapidly, expecting to pass 5 million by the end of the decade. More than 25% of those people, or 1.7 million are non violent drug offenses. Depending on the custody level and State, it costs about $30,000 to imprison someone per year, most of which goes to security. Nearly half of that number are people in prison for marijuana. Arrested users tend to be young, college age people and the arrest can completely destroy their future. Jobs become hard to get, scholarships and Grants for school are simply impossible. Simply because a person elects to smoke their recreation instead of buying it from the Adolph Coors company. In 2009 the Louisiana State University Police arrested 38 people on campus for possession of marijuana in one single semester and at Oswego State University in Ohio the University police report that they made 228 marijuana arrests in 2010 and this had increased from only 59 in 2009, representing a 400% increase in these arrests in only the last few years. How long can tax payers continue to be the muscle for Coors, Budweiser and Pfizer?