Senator Feinstein,
I have felt compelled to contact you and bring forward an important and albeit controversial topic that I believe needs to be addressed. At face value I understand that you are opposed to this particular issue but I hope to bring to light many of the beneficial underlying issues that will come about with the legalization of marijuana. Many of these underlying issues you have supported with great vigor in your time as a California senator such as agriculture, home land security, and helping people in need.
I understand that making the claim that marijuana can bring positive changes in our country seems both obscure and farfetched but I implore you to consider my reasoning with an open mind. After all many of us have been told time and time again about the arguments against legalizing marijuana such as, it will increase crime, it will be sold to our children, and that it is a deadly drug. However no one has explained why these things would happen as a result of marijuana legalization. Why would crime increase if possessing, selling, and using marijuana were no longer illegal? Assuming that if legal, marijuana would have the same regulations as alcohol then why would our children have it sold to them? If marijuana is such a deadly drug then why are we not seeing the same death rates as cocaine and heroin or even alcohol and tobacco? Through no fault of our own we believed these arguments because they were told to us by people that we trusted. Politicians, law enforcement, teachers, and our own family members have constantly ingrained in us these arguments against this particular plant. Does this mean that the people we trusted have deliberately deceived us? Of course not! These people were told the same thing from their politicians, law enforcement officials, teachers, and family members. We have been told so many times that we have come to believe these myths as facts. In the opening lines of Common Sense, Thomas Paine wrote, “…a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom”. I have made it my personal mission to introduce reason into this discussion in order to disprove the arguments that have been drilled into our minds over the years; and, prove that marijuana prohibition is wrong and the right thing to do is legalize the plant.
In order to better understand the benefits of marijuana legalization we must first dispel the arguments against it. A popular argument is that if marijuana was to be legalized then it would lead to increased crime in the country. This argument grossly contradicts itself. If a law was overturned and a once illegal activity became legal then the crime would no longer exist. The fact is that crime would decrease, so why would someone claim that crime would become more prevalent if marijuana became legal? I believe that the people making these arguments are imagining drug runners importing drugs into the country more than ever before and picturing their streets flooded with drug dealers selling marijuana to other criminals and kids. What else would they think? We have all understood marijuana as an illegal drug, and there has been no legitimate market for it in our country, so our minds automatically associate marijuana with illegal activity. Would this really happen if marijuana were legal and regulated as alcohol? I believe not. This would effectively end drug dealers selling marijuana to our kids and cut revenue to criminal organizations and operations. Legitimate businessmen would not sell marijuana to our children just as they do not sell alcohol to them. Our children would become safer because a drug dealer would not hesitate to supply kids with any kind of drug just to turn a profit, but a licensed store would abide by the laws just as they do today with alcohol and tobacco. This makes not only our children, but all of our citizens safer. A marijuana user would no longer risk buying from an armed and dangerous dealer where the user could very well be attacked and robbed which often happens. They would now be able to purchase it in the safety of a store. This removes the need for a dealer and he is eliminated from the equation and replaced by a law abiding store owner or worker.
The other popular argument is that marijuana is a deadly drug; however, we can dismiss this claim by studying the statistics of drug use alongside the annual causes of death in America. At the end of this letter is a table of annual deaths (in 2007) in America found on the website www.drugwarfacts.org. The evidence against the argument that marijuana is a dangerous drug is staggering. Not one marijuana related death was recorded in 2007. On top of that, the deaths that were recorded from alcohol and prescription drugs were in the tens of thousands. I guarantee if you were to do more research on the subject that you would find similar results and you would not find any study ranking marijuana deaths higher than alcohol, prescription drugs, or even tobacco. If we investigate marijuana thoroughly we will find that much of what we have been told about this plant has been false.
Now that the some of the more popular arguments against marijuana have been properly addressed, we can now discuss the many benefits that it can provide for the country. Most of these relate to issues that you yourself have been a major advocate for such as agriculture, homeland security, and helping the underprivileged. I will not merely claim that marijuana will cause these positive results but more importantly I will address why. If marijuana was to be legalized then America could take full advantage of producing it in this country. Farmers would begin to grow and cultivate it much like they do tobacco. This could not only help struggling farmers get back on their feet, and make way for new farmers, but it would also create more jobs for farm workers tending the crop. Marijuana is the most widely used illicit drug in America so there would undoubtedly be a large market for it if it became legal. Large enough in fact to potentially make it one of America’s biggest cash crops. Legalizing marijuana would not only help struggling farmers and people looking for jobs in a hard economy, but it will bring significant wealth to the economy which has been slow to recover recently.
As involved with homeland security as you are I would like to explain how legalizing marijuana would make America safer. Senator, I live in San Diego and if I were to get into my car and drive a mere thirty minutes to the south I would be driving into a war zone. Mexico has erupted in violence and the cartels are gaining more strength each day. I constantly witness on the news, both local and national, mass graves being uncovered and dismembered bodies found. The money being poured into combating these cartels from both the American and Mexican governments has done little to slow their progress. Many people believe that the proper way to combat the cartels is to pursue their highest echelon, “if you cut the head off the snake it will die”. However for thirty years since the drug war has gone on this strategy has repeatedly failed. If it had succeeded we would not find ourselves boarding a war. I believe that the cartels behave more like a weed. If a weed is cut at the surface it will grow back in a matter of days. However, if you attack the weed’s roots it will die for good. The cartels main life line, or their “roots”, is the money that they make from the drugs that they sell. If marijuana was to be legalized and produced in the U.S. then that would take an entire source of income away from the cartels thereby weakening their regime. They would no longer have this money to buy weapons, carry out hits on political and law enforcement officials, and be unable to pay their members. This would severely cripple their criminal enterprise and we would be more able to effectively combat them. This would not only create a safer Mexico but America in turn would be more secure. Citizens would no longer be afraid of cartel violence spilling over into America nor would they be afraid of once again visiting Mexico safely. There is no doubt that homeland security would greatly benefit from marijuana legalization.
Finally, I would like to discuss how marijuana helps people in everyday life. I have already listed many examples like creating jobs in a struggling economy, improving agriculture, and making a safer more secure America. On top of this we will also improve social issues; for instance, the way our criminal justice system operates and how our citizens are affected by it. Right now our prisons are terribly over crowded, and this is mostly because drug offenders make up a significant portion of the prison population. When a marijuana user is sent to prison he is exposed to murders, rapists, and other prison gangs. There have been many examples of people entering prisons for minor drug offenses and coming out as hardened gang members. Many people in prison will join a gang for protection, and in the case of drug users, once they are done with their two year sentence they are morphed into dangerous criminals and more often than not they return to prison for a greater offense. In this case we are doing our citizens a great disservice. Not only are we making marijuana users worse offenders but we are making everyday citizens less safe by creating hardened criminals in our prison systems and releasing them into our populations. The money saved by keeping marijuana users out of prison could be better put to use for other community service issues. More money can be granted to homeless shelters, addiction counseling, and other community service programs that help people in need. With this strategy we would be helping people rather than condemning them to prison. Our criminal justice system has no intention of creating criminals but it is a sad reality that we should not ignore. Rather than overhauling the system we can circumvent the problem by legalizing one plant. We will help not only marijuana smokers but also our neighbors a great deal by ending marijuana prohibition.
I hope I have brought to light many of the benefits that the decriminalization and legalization of marijuana can bring. I also hope that I have exposed the myths surrounding this issue as well. Most importantly; however, I hope I have convinced you to question why. The fear brought on by the myths about marijuana can be difficult to overcome, especially when they have been so overwhelmingly repeated throughout the many years that they have existed. But the question must be asked, will we allow the fear of change to cripple the prospect of a more perfect America? I could think of fewer things that would be a greater disservice to the American people than to deny them the opportunity of a more promising future. Senator, let us not become a circumstance from the influences of time, but more so, a product of reason and truth.
Very sincerely and respectfully,
Ryan Kuncik
(2007 - annual causes of death by cause)
| 806,156 | |
| 562,875 | |
| 43,945 | |
| 38,371 | |
| 34,828 | |
| 34,598 | |
| 31,224 | |
| 29,846 | |
| 23,199 | |
| 18,361 | |
| 11,295 | |
| 7,407 | |
| 0 |
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