Affirmative Harms & Significance
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The status quo when it comes to dealing with marijuana laws is significantly harmful. It is significantly harmful because there are dangerous drug cartels in Mexico, people who are using a “harmless” drug are being put in jail daily, and also because, without regulation, some people may be purchasing laced or other unsafe marijuana.
“The government says more than 34,600 have been killed in the four years since President Felipe Calderón took office and threw the federal police and military at the cartels, with the toll for 2010, 15,237, the heaviest yet.”- -snip-
This shows just how dangerous the drug war in Mexico is, and if marijuana was legalized, a large chunk of that danger would be gone.
In 2009, over half of all of the 1,663,582 drug related arrests were related to marijuana, a calculated total of 858,408. Out of that 858,408, an estimated 758,593 people were arrested for possession only. Also, America is spending $42 billion a year on the “War on Weed.” This is significantly harmful, to our country, and the people in it. Why would the government spend so much money towards cracking down on a drug that is considered “harmless” (for the fact that there has not been a single death directly linked to marijuana)? $42 billion a huge amount of money, that if we stopped using towards a war on a harmless drug, we could patch up a lot of our countries problems, such as: paying “the entire $7 billion annual increase in the State Children's Health Insurance Program... and there'd still be $35 billion left over.” - -citesnip- or you could hire “880,000 schoolteachers at the average U.S. teacher salary of $47,602 per year.” - -citesnip- Plus, if the government decided to regulate marijuana, similar to how cigarettes or alcohol is regulated, they could make an estimated revenue of up to $1 billion in just California.
One thing that turns people away from marijuana is the fact that, since it is not regulated, there is the possibility of buying it laced. Although it doesn’t happen often, it is possible, and that is significantly harmful. If the government were to regulate marijuana, people could go into a dispensary and not worry about whether or not the weed they are buying is laced or not.
Work...
