Marijuana policies are the problem, not the drug: Efrain Camargo (Opinion)

Marijuana grows at a legal collective in the hills near Clearlake Oaks, California, in this 2014 file photo. (Jason Henry, The New York Times, File, 2014)

By Guest Columnist

 

 Efrain Camargo is a graduating senior from Saint Martin de Porres High School.Efrain Camargo 

Over the years, people have been taught that marijuana was an evil drug.

This drug is so evil that approximately 750,000 people are arrested every year and some of them convicted and fined for its use in the United States. So evil that every 42 seconds someone gets arrested for it.

America is so convinced of marijuana's evils, that we are willing to root out this drug wherever it is used, bought, and sold, right?

Wrong.

in our nation's capital, before legalization, 91 percent of arrested marijuana dealers were African-American. What about the other 9 percent? Well, before Washington voters legalized its use, only 4 percent of Washington, D.C.'s arrested marijuana dealers were Caucasian.

Now what if I told you that 49.2 percent of the people who bought and used marijuana in Washington, D.C., were Caucasian and that 40.9 percent were African-American? That's according to Amos Irwin, chief of staff at the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation, in a 2014 Huffington Post article.

Well, if this is the case, why are African-Americans being incarcerated on a higher scale? Shouldn't there be about an even amount of arrests between the two groups of people?

Is marijuana really evil or are the policies that have been put into place the problem? America realizes that cannabis is not nearly the evil it is made out to be and should decriminalize its use.

Marijuana is known as a Schedule I controlled substance. Legally, this means that marijuana use is categorized with substances such as heroin, LSD, ecstasy, methaqualone, and peyote.

In 2014, heroin overdoses killed more than 10,000 people in the United States. Marijuana overdoses are virtually nonexistent but yet marijuana is ruled as the same thing in eyes of the law.

Is the American public really ready to believe that marijuana and heroin present the same dangers to individuals and the society at large?

Yes, marijuana has long been linked to addiction and abuse. This, admittedly, would be reason enough for our society not to consider legalizing it. However, some psychologists have changed their position on old perceptions and have said that marijuana is not a gateway drug.

What has been taught for generations is that people who try marijuana may eventually try harder drugs in search of a stronger high, and that overall experimentation with marijuana will lead users down a dangerous path of addiction. But current research simply does not back up these claims.

Is the American public really ready to believe that marijuana and heroin present the same dangers?

On the contrary, alcohol and nicotine are more likely to cause addiction and drug dependency. These lower-schedule substances have also been known to kill people, but in the eyes of the law, they are better because they are legal.

People may argue that marijuana use causes violence. Well, government data have proven this idea to be false. In Denver, Colorado, both violent and petty crime  decreased after the legalization of marijuana. The countywide murder rate dropped 52.9 percent after the legalization of recreational use.

What people don't understand is that there is a black market for marijuana similar to the one that we have experienced before with the prohibition of alcohol and that caused the Mafia and other criminal syndicates to come into play, causing the crime rate to increase. Why? They were killing their competitors for territory to sell their alcohol.

Today, there is no difference; this is still going on, just with a different substance. But marijuana intoxication does not cause violence; the violence is caused by the illegal distribution of marijuana.

What job would the people who sell marijuana have if anybody can get it from the stores? Some will say -- but that means that they will just move on to selling harder drugs. Well, this may be the case, but imprisoning drug abusers does not solve the issue. We must rehabilitate them.