I don't like marijuana. I don't like the smell that stays in your clothes. I don't like trying to eat dinner at my friend's house after a shift delivering pizza, only to have a cloud of smoke get blown in my face when I go to take a bite.
But what I really don't like is misinformation. So when I sat through a half-semester health class two years ago, you can imagine my discontent when my professor, who just a few classes ago had casually mentioned that he "doesn't believe in vaccines," tried to make the argument that marijuana was just as dangerous as cigarettes.
When I sat down to write this article, I didn't plan on writing about my health class. But that's what comes up whenever I think about marijuana; not the 70-plus years of prohibition that has driven kids and young adults to more dangerous drugs like cigarettes and alcohol, not the hyper-enforcement of drug laws that has created a booming market for drug cartels and other criminals, not even the overpopulation of the American prison system, a direct result of the criminalization of marijuana and other drugs. No, I think about how in every school I've attended since I was 10 I've heard from teachers about how marijuana is a gateway drug, something that makes you want to do cocaine and heroin, and eventually die a washed-up meth addict in a gutter. Or how I've had legitimate conversations with "educated" adults, who warn me about the dangers of injecting marijuana (no, that wasn't a joke).
This is the effect of marijuana prohibition. Every other argument for legalization has been made. We know it's wrong to cram more and more people into a bloated prison system. We know it's wrong to try and legislate what people do with their lives unless they're hurting people around them. [quote]That's why the majority of the American public supports the end of bans on medical marijuana. Because we know that banning medical marijuana is like banning Tylenol, the key difference being that Tylenol doesn't help chemotherapy patients keep food down.[/quote]That's why there's a growing movement among Americans and even among politicians to legalize marijuana.
America is quickly becoming aware that it's time to end marijuana prohibition. But it's not happening fast enough, and legislation isn't the only problem. We need to confront the fact that our teachers and parents aren't telling the truth. They think they are, but that's because they fell victim to the same misinformation that caused marijuana to be banned in the first place. Marijuana isn't harmless, but few people can tell you what harmful effects it actually has, because the truth has become so clouded by misinformation and fear. So I support legalization, not just because it's morally wrong to throw people in jail for enjoying a safe alternative to tobacco and alcohol, but because I support an environment where people don't lie to make things illegal, and where teachers aren't wasting their students' time with blatantly false claims about things they don't understand.