Cannabis is a broadly used as illegal drug. The prohibition of marijuana results in prosecutions and arrests that penalize millions of individuals steers racial inequality and lessens access to employment, social services, and education. Marijuana prohibition sources billions of dollars to cartels and criminals, gangs, diverts law enforcement, generates violence, and causes significant environmental damage. Around the world, prohibiting and enactment laws barring the production and use of Marijuana were adopted to minimize the harms associated with cannabis. Policies and regulatory systems have impacted the extent of marijuana use. As a result of risks related to Marijuana, its widespread use will no doubt have social costs.
Marijuana is the only drug to be used widely yet criminalized in almost all states. Regular Cannabis users in the States amount to almost twenty million Americans; normally, through smoking the dried buds and it is estimated that over 45 percent of adults have attempted it, although the United States government ranks Marijuana as a Schedule I illicit drug ( Criminal Justice Policy Foundation) . In the majority of states, people caught in possession of Marijuana, no matter the amount, can be arrested, jailed, fined, and prone to a permanent criminal record. Roughly seven hundred thousand arrests are made annually by police officers due to Marijuana policy violations, with a greater percentage coming from possession alone.
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Although anybody in illegal possession of Marijuana can possibly be detained for cannabis violation, law enforcement officers unevenly enforce Marijuana policies versus minorities. Most police officers do not regard ownership of Marijuana for individual use as a consequential offense; however, they use the speculation of cannabis possession or use as a plea to halt and probe people whether walking, socializing, or driving. The United States Supreme Court upheld the lawfulness of halting motorists for any sort of suspected violation regardless of the aim being to probe for proof without necessarily acquiring a search warrant.
Prisons incarcerate individuals who have been convicted of felonies and ones serving comparatively lengthy verdicts, often more than one year. Also, prisons detain persons who turned out to be serving convictions of liberation which had been canceled since they were either arraign for doing an alternative offense, breached one among various restrictive orders of probation, for instance, moving to a contemporary residence without giving notification or skipping an engagement with a probation officer, or rather used cannabis or other illicit drugs. State prisoners that were imprisoned on marijuana charges as of 2004 were 1.4 percent ( Criminal Justice Policy Foundation) . Nonetheless, more than one hundred thousand individuals revolve around resident prisons on marijuana charges or violation of cannabis parole.
In the majority of states, possession of Marijuana can edge to being arranged into prison, which is both terrifying and humiliating. Proceeding to either disquisition appointment or court result in defendants and their household lose their employment which is as good as losing their places of residence. Worse still, crime sheets have lasting repercussions ( Criminal Justice Policy Foundation) . Individuals having Marijuana arrest and judgment records are prone to losing numerous job opportunities, public benefits, and sometimes eligibility to access student loans. Families of persons charged with violation of Marijuana laws might be kicked out of private and public living quarters, and in case that they end up homeless, their children can be put to foster care by social service agencies. Consequentially, the convicted persons in most states are banned from jury services forever or lose their civil rights indefinitely. Parents that test positive for marijuana risk being reported to Child Protective Service and might lose charge of their children.
Since there is less data that separates cannabis crimes from other drug- law violations, Marijuana is evidently not the paramount aspect in confinement. Still, it is a leading factor in arrests, with over five hundred thousand individuals annually arrested for simply being in possession of Marijuana. As earlier discussed, the Latino or blacks and young users are the likelier to be apprehended as compared to their white counterparts basically because they often stay in high-crime places attracting vigorous police attention.
Marijuana blueprint is thus ensnared in a vise. Kleiman (2019) argues that even with a significant decline in price per hour of insobriety, the fabrication has grown to the extent that it is undoubtedly the greatest illegal market in the country, pinching about $50 billion in trading annually. According to Kleiman (2019), implementation input needed to control the marijuana illicit market is proportionate to the market size in terms of dollars, meaning a fifty billion dollar market can beckon off a degree of law execution that would have created an influence on the negligible market of inception a while back. With the increase in the pervasiveness of Cannabis Use Disorder indicating the demand for substantial enforcement, the thoroughgoing market size would toughen any efficient attempt making it an extremely expensive plan with regard to detentions and prosecutions needed. Merging that reality with competing material demands of enforcement in anticipation of tremendous drugs, brutal crime and declining political liberality for the interference of extensive arrests and human and monetary costs of accumulated incarceration, and distinctly for ethnic distortion in penal law contacts, and pressing repression on Marijuana dealing appears to be far off the realm of the possible. Similar to challenges with cannabis are getting comprehensible, over-decades mobilization to discourage possible users on cannabis risks has so far been defeated decisively.
Legalizing cannabis means the policy will be aimed at eliminating the illegal market and coming up with a lawful market that would deliver the product of verified purity and well-known chemical content while reducing the trend in precarious use by adolescents. Kleiman (2019) states further that; legalization would therefore involve taxation aimed at maintaining the prices of Marijuana, product standardization, and market limits to discourage the marijuana industry from encouraging product misuse.
Uplifting prohibitions against Marijuana suggests that commercialized curiosity can fairly be averted of marijuana distribution or at the minimum off retailing procedures ( Larkin Jr, 2018) . Cannabis could thus be traded by user cooperatives or nonprofits, or Marijuana retailing could become a state monopoly.
Price is preferably the solely most significant factor to regulate. Marijuana, however, being illegal, is a renowned price-effective drug. For instance, despite cannabis being illegal in New York City, a gram of moderately high-power substance (assume 15 percent THC by weight) is acquired for ten dollars ( Todd, 2018) ; which means a consumer can get one hundred and fifty milligrams of THC for ten dollars, spending roughly seven cents per milligram. Although noticing some social purpose is hard, it can be served by lowering the marijuana intoxication prices. An individual who consumes cannabis once per week only spends around ten dollars monthly on Marijuana hence would stand to gain relatively from price reductions. Legalizing Marijuana will thus decrease its prices since there would be no price ad-on to cater surplus costs of an illegal venture as witnessed with current prices; the risks of doing things secretly and the extra wages and daring remit bid by individuals whose employments bear menace of incarceration, arrest and illegal market violence. A review by Todd (2018) states that taxing based on THC components will likely reduce the increase in potency, which will encourage consumption of verified varieties.
Consumers might be required to undertake some easy tasks to determine their awareness of precautions and risks prior to purchasing Marijuana. Social media, schools, and mass media could act as channels for a variant mode of precaution education aimed at helping individuals to maintain moderation.
References
Criminal Justice Policy Foundation. (n.d.). Cannabis (Marijuana) — Criminal Justice Policy Foundation . https://www.cjpf.org/cannabis
Kleiman A. R. Mark. (2019). The public-health case for legalizing Marijuana . National Affairs. https://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/the-public-health-case-for-legalizing-marijuana
Larkin Jr, P. J. (2018). Introduction to a Debate: Marijuana: Legalize, Decriminalize, or Leave the Status Quo in Place. Berkeley J. Crim. L. , 23 , 73.
Todd, T. (2018). The benefits of marijuana legalization and regulation. Berkeley J. Crim. L. , 23 , 99.
