Why I Believe Marijuana Should Be Legalized.

In this blog post I am going to give my thoughts about why I believe Marijuana, otherwise known as “weed” or “cannabis” should be legalized.
While marijuana use definitely has  legitimate medical effects, contrary to the narrative of it being a harmful drug that has persisted for so long, the reason I believe this is because of my own personal experience with it while in Amsterdam.
Growing up here in the United States, I have always had a pretty negative view on it, especially considering my family. Both my mom and my dad were pretty strict, with my mom even being my own middle school principal back at that time. And both, while still believing that are medical usages for it, were still very anti-marijuana.
So you can imagine that when I say while visiting Amsterdam I experienced one of the biggest culture shocks I have had. When I was planning my trip I knew that it was legal there, but I didn’t realize just how prevalent it was in the culture specifically in that city. I saw many coffee shops, or places where you can legally purchase marijuana, as well as museums and other various stores related to it. Obviously this is much different than anything I had seen before. Being legal, this as well as the smell of it being all over the place was considered to be pretty normal.

During my stay in the city, I figured this would be a good a place as ever to try it and not have to worry about the legality of it since I had always been curious. And so me, and the group I was with, all went out to one of the coffee shops near our hostel and split some of there “space cake”, which is basically a muffin infused with the cannabinoids. I should mention that the staff at the coffee shop was very professional, and let everyone know who had never experienced it before exactly what was going to happen, and what they should do.
I went into doing this pretty nervously, especially after about a half hour after eating it when I started to “feel it”. But, after I did finally feel it I stopped being nervous. I felt fine, just a little different. We walked around the city a little more, went through some beautiful tulip gardens, and enjoyed a bike ride through some of the small parks scattered around. I had a good time, and after a while the “high” went away and I felt normal again. Nothing bad had happened at all, during or since, and would say the experience was overall better than expected, if nothing too exciting. I didn’t get addicted, in fact I hardly think about it that often at all. And , just like that though, my views on cannabis had changed.

Just looking at some of the actual effects that this legalization has brought on in the Dutch people can shed some light for even more reasons for advocacy of legalization. Dutch citizens use cannabis at a lower rate than many of their neighbors,  with lifetime rates being at 25.7% compared to the United States 41.5%, significantly lower prison population rates per 100,000 population (700 US vs 70 Netherlands).
There is also significantly lower rates of hard drug consumption, which could be linked to removing a cannabis consumers interaction with any illegal vendors who are more likely to try and sell them these harder drugs. Not only all of this but the Dutch Marijuana industry brings in over $600 million in tax revenue for the country yearly, imagine how much the United States government could make if it was legal and taxed as opposed to illegal and wasting billions on the war on drugs.
Not only do I advocate for the legality of it, I am also an advocate for removing the stigma behind it’s usage. I don’t believe that most of the people that are using it are anything like the typically depicted “stoner”. There are even many highly successful people that openly use it. If legalized I’m sure that there will even be many more medical usages that they will find that currently can’t be found since research is hard to do considering it’s legality here in the Americas.
Maybe even one day, my mom who sometimes has pretty severe sleeping problems will be able to use a medicine made from these cannabinoids to be able to sleep better at night without feeling bad that it came from cannabis. If anything I just believe that the stigmas behind using need to go away before we will accomplish what can be done with the plant, and if this last election has shown anything it looks like our country is on the way towards that.