My Life as a Marijuana Smoker

5:30AM....my alarm goes off. It's time to roll out of bed and head to the gym for an early morning workout. As the hour passes and my workout is over I head back home and get ready for school. At school I study hard in order to earn my above average grades. I look at the clock, 4:00PM.... time to get ready for work. I get dressed for work, where I waitress four times a week. After my shift, I head home dreaming of the comfort of my couch. As I step into the coziness of my own apartment, I feel exhausted, but I am proud of my productive day. 10:00PM.... I watch my favorite T.V. shows. 10:30PM.... I relieve the stress from my packed day with a smooth, calming bong hit of my medicinal marijuana and I call it a day.

It's not marijuana that keeps people from being productive, it's unproductive people who happen to smoke marijuana.

The War on Drugs

I'm sure I have mentioned before about how much I can not stand the war on drugs. It has failed. Karen Tandy, the administrator for the DEA, needs to wake up and realize the negative effects of the war on drugs. By making drugs illegal it is empowering and enriching criminals. Young teens, who want to buy drugs, go directly to dealers (who are not the most trustworthy people). If I was a parent I would not want my kids to be associated with drug dealers. I would rather the dealers not have the power of selling illegal substances but the government have the power, therefore it could be regulated.

This image is from the DEA's website. It is apart of a magazine they created that is targeted to teenagers in order to encourage them not to smoke marijuana. I don't think teenagers should smoke weed, I just think the way the government is going about informing teenagers is a joke and not believable.

First, they use images that are unrealistic and posed. For example, on the cover page of the magazine (which is called Stumble Weed) they show two teenage boys making a drug deal. These boys look sleazy and like your typical troublemaker. They are trying to show young teenagers that if you deal with marijuana you are sleazy and bad. I think it is bad for young teenagers to be dealing with marijuana, but I think it is around the "good" kids as well. If the creators of Stumble Weed made this more realistic they would get a better reaction from viewers.

I also think that showing kids the consequences of smoking weed as being unmotivated and lazy they are not convincing them not to smoke it. Marijuana is difficult to defend as being bad because it has little negative effects. Teenagers don't care about the effects it has on their bodies because they want to experiment. What they do care about is the different ways they can be punished by law enforcement if they do get caught. Because they are going to try things no matter what, teenagers are extremely curious.

My point here is to show what little deterant characteristics marijuana has. It has a little amount of negative effects and it isn't deadly. In high school, the drugs I was afraid of were the deadly ones like ecstasy and heroine, which kids also did anyway. I think the obvious characteristic of marijuana is that it is not that bad. The only negative aspect is the fact that it is illegal. Young teenagers are dealing with drug dealers when they want to smoke weed. It would be much safer if they had to deal with government controlled retailers if they wanted to smoke, which would make it more difficult to retrieve just like alcohol.

Marijuana Brain Scans

This video is about the effects that marijuana has on the brain (or at least that is what is says it is about). The only problem is that it only says a little bit about the effects of marijuana on the brain. It talks mostly about alcohol and methamphetamines and how these drugs have an extreme effect on the brain. The effects include the decrease in the amount of brain tissue which could result in mental and pyschiatric problems. The part that talks about marijuana's effect mentions that marijuana causes the brain tissue to decrease which leads to a decrease of memory and motivation.

Well, I want the right to lose my motivation and memory. How can it be the government's right to tell me that I shouldn't smoke marijuana because I can lose my motivation. That means they should just make fattening food illegal because it gives people diseases. They should make exercise illegal because one could get injured in action. They should make sex illegal because it spreads viruses and diseases. I think your probably getting my point that we should have the right to receive the consequences of our actions if we know the consequences. Everything can possibly harm individuals, but the government can't stop them from happening by making them illegal. I want the right to harm myself with marijuana, even though I feel it is pretty close to harmless.

California's Annual Marijuana Campaign

The following article is about the California's law enforcements effort to eradicate marijuana growth in the state. It was featured on the FresnoBee website.

California's annual campaign against marijuana growers destroyed nearly three million plants this year. That breaks the old record of about 1.7 million marijuana plants, which was set last year. California Attorney General Jerry Brown on Tuesday said state, federal and local law enforcement agents uncovered nearly 500 large pot farms on state and federal land this year. They also seized 41 guns and arrested 53 suspected growers as part of the annual Campaign Against Marijuana Planting. The top growing areas in California are Lake, Humboldt, Shasta, Mendocino and Tulare counties. Also on Tuesday, federal officials said they made 162 arrests and seized nearly one million plants in two recent marijuana crackdowns.

The reason why I wanted to show this article, which is opposing my stance, is to better understand why the amount eradicated by the government has increased and why I think it will keep increasing. I do not think that the government's efforts have become stronger in order for them to destroy three million plants this year. I believe the demand has grown stronger in the state of California. Therefore, supply is growing. Grower's are realizing the amount of demand that is available and are taking advantage of it. The government keeps thinking that they are slowly beating the war on marijuana because the numbers are rising, but because they are so ignorant they don't realize that there is more marijuana growth because there are more people wanting it. The war on marijuana will never prevail because it is a lost cause. If people want marijuana, they will get it. The only thing the government could do positively is to take advantage of the demand and make marijuana legal and tax it. They could be decreasing our debt, but they don't because they have a misconception about what marijuana is and how it effects the lives of people.

Putting it into Perspective

On the DEA's website there is an increased eradication section which shows the amount of marijuana they have eradicated from around the United States. The amount eradicated totaled to 5 million plants in 2005. I was thinking about this amount and noticing how much money the government could have made if they had taxed this amount of marijuana growth.

The average marijuana plant produces three pounds of marijuana which can be sold for $4,000 a pound. If the government used the tax they put on cigarettes, which is 39 cents per pack, on marijuana sales they would make at least $2,800 per pound. In relation to the 5 million plants the government eradicated, they could have made $42 billion. This is an insane amount of money that the government is passing on because of the politics of marijuana. There is such a stigma on marijuana smoking given by society that limits our government from profiting and decreasing our national debt.

Giuliani's View on Medical Marijuana

After I watched this video I felt like I could just scream at my computer. I am so disappointed with the answer Giuliani gave to the lady's question. She asked him why he believes that marijuana should not be legal for medical purposes (she didn't have her facts correct, but his answer is the problem). He responded with the fact that the FDA has not approved marijuana as a medicine and there are alternatives to marijuana. The fact that he acknowledged alternatives to marijuana is what bothers me the most. People (especially the FDA) are so convinced that prescription drugs are the right direction for our country. How could somebody say that a chemically made alternative is better than a natural plant that grows from the earth. If we went back 200 years ago and told people that one day certain plants will be illegal, they would look at us like we are out of our minds. It is so ridiculous to see how blatantly our government is pushing prescription drugs down our throats. Can't we just open our eyes to reality and notice that chemically altered pills should not be an alternative to marijuana.