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Harmon Amakobe

Student , University of Delaware

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Why is cannabis illegal?

I am really curious as to why marijuana is illegal. When the topic of legalization comes up, most people that I meet fail to give compelling reasons other than the ones they received during anti-drug week in fifth grade; we are all adults now, and the mystery of why a seemingly harmless recreational drug is illegal is not solved by a conclusive "Just say no."

It is not physically addictive. But like any pleasure inducing activity, it can be mentally addictive; Facebook stalking shares this quality.

It cannot be resolved for use in a deadly poison (ie. opium and coniine). A documentary I watched a little while ago stated that one would have to smoke 1500 lbs of marijuana in 15 minutes in order to overdose, any human with that kind of lung capacity will have better things to do than seeking a deathly high.

It has very little long term effects. Alcohol has liver damage, tobacco has its lung cancer and the irritated "I'm going out for a smoke" habit. Campaigns claim that marijuana kills brain cells; but I've grown up among extremely intelligent people who have done nothing but smoke weed and read throughout their school careers, it must be killing off the bad brain cells.

It does not cause aggressiveness. The association between alcohol and bar fights is ubiquitous. However, how many fights have you heard about involving two people intoxicated with marijuana? If anything, cannabis should be used as a peacekeeper in riots; peace, love and unity would be the only thing coming out of the tear gas canisters.

All jokes aside, the question still remains. Why has this plant been prohibited? Was there really a legitimate reason to do so besides fulfilling a conservative right-wing's death wishes? If anyone can really give me some legitimate, non-contradictory and non-hypocritical reasoning I will be forever grateful.

"[Law is] a fickle mistress, subject always to the whims and prejudices of those who administered the laws."
- Frank Herbert

Topics: Federal medical marijuana cannabis law leadership marijuana medical cannabis weed
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    peter lindsay 30+

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    May 21 2012: Here 's a good question. If marijuana is illegal because of all those standard conspiracy theories(timber, cotton etc) that all seem to centre around the US. Why is it illegal in Australia and Europe? I think a big contributor was that they realised alchohol was bad for society but couldn't be controlled due to cultural expectations so they thought they would nip cannabis in the bud so to speak. Ban it before it was widely used so it won't be missed. Afterall the stuff you smoke and the stuff you make shirts out of are very different plants. On another note but related to your passage above. It is now widely accepted that long term use especially if started in adolescence causes permanent changes in the hippocampus. These changes show that marijuana is in fact physically addictive.

    • Harmon Amakobe

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      May 22 2012: Nip it in the bud... that is quite thought provoking and I thank you for that. I have never looked at it that way. Perhaps that is how it happened, protective parenting by the government so to speak. If that were the case, however, the popularity of this drug and the failure of the agencies to curb the black market effectively is proof that simple prohibition is bad parenting. Humans are naturally adventurous and when we are told no, our next natural question is "why?" followed by a sufficient personal foray into the scientific method; we learn how to test hypotheses early hehe..

      Also, the fact that they legalized many other seemingly worse things, and ran smear campaigns made them out to be hypocrites, and we all know from our teenage years that that is the strongest argument to use on your parents. I do like this hypothesis, though, I just think it stands to reason that a different approach could have been taken (and can still be taken). And as far as permanent changes, I do agree that any mind-altering substance/event/object has the capability to change one permanently. Everyone remembers their first time..er..having cake, it changes them mentally, permanently so, the physical changes due to that cake are a many and hard to track.

      The problem with cannabis is that it's hard to prove physical permanent change, studies are done but there is nothing conclusive. Imagine someone sitting in a nursing home unable to remember his daughter's, and you ask the attendant, "What happened to him?" and she replies "Oh, he used to smoke too much marijuana, now his hippocampus is permanently damaged." We rarely hear about such cases and yet the liver damage and lung cancer cases in tobacco and alcohol are apparent and easy to pinpoint.

      Thank you for your thoughts! They really made me think and I hope mine do the same for you.
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        peter lindsay 30+

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        May 22 2012: If my hypothesis above is correct, I agree it was a total failure. With regard to the hippocampus I assume we will hear more and more about it in future as the FMRI and PET scans used to identify the changes are relatively new procedures. I also agree that making it illegal is just a stimulus for teenagers. There are plenty of legal plants and fungi that are just as effective, but they lack the street cred because thay're not naughty.

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