Mac Bryan next author in 2016-2017 MLHS senior student editorial series
The Fight for Recreational Marijuana
For years, recreational marijuana has been illegal . . . until 2014.
In 2014, Colorado and Washington became the first two states to legalize recreational marijuana, and states slowly continue to decriminalize and legalize recreational marijuana. Since then, both states have increased their income, unemployment rates went down and crime rates also went down
I believe legalizing recreational marijuana could potentially bring the United States (U. S.) out of debt, reduce unemployment and also reduce the crime rate. According to the federal budget, the United States is $19.5 trillion in debt. Now, if each state were to legalize recreational use, this could potentially pull the U. S. out of debt. How, you ask? The federal government could gain money through taxing marijuana. The tax doesn’t even have to be a lot because of the wide variety of dispensaries.
With Colorado and Washington legalizing recreational marijuana, dispensaries in these two states have been exploding with success and growing rapidly; therefore . . . more jobs.
National unemployment has been an issue for years. If more dispensaries were spread through the country, more people could have access to more jobs; not only in the dispensaries, but also supplying the dispensaries.
Since these states have legalized one of the most problematic “drugs” in the nation, the supply-and-demand of drug trafficking has gone. Why try and smuggle drugs when they can be bought in the nearest town? For example, since the legalization of recreational marijuana in Colorado, crime rates have decreased by 14.6%. Also, Portugal was the first country to “decriminalize” ALL drugs. The idea was to let the problems sort themselves out . . . and it worked!
Now I am not saying the U. S. should decriminalize all drugs, but that it might be alright to legalize one of them.
Now that more people are beginning to realize that marijuana is not as bad as thought, there should be a bigger push to legalize recreational use nationwide. It could help pull us out of debt from the taxes generated, lower the crime rates and raise the employment level.
You never know . . . it may help.