Legalization of Marijuana

Marijuana, a member of the cannabis family, is the most commonly used illegal drug in the United States. Who would imagine that such a widely used substance is illegal? Until 1937, marijuana was legal in all U.S states, but these laws were rarely enforced, and marijuana remained widely used throughout the 1960's 70's 80's and 90's. In fact it is still widely used today. However, none of this has gone unnoticed by the government. In the 1970's, the "War on Drugs" campaign was initiated. The government began to advertise negative information about marijuana (a lot of which was untested, and later proven to be false) to lower drug usage. But is it all bad? Marijuana has been shown to have medicinal benefits, as well as a wide range of other benefits. The information the government distributed about it has been tested and retested and is losing its authority quickly. But now the question has been raised: should marijuana be illegal at all? The answer is that all forms of marijuana usage should be legalized.
The start of the marijuana ban was on the assumption that the negative information about marijuana distributed by the government was accurate. The fact is that the dangers of marijuana use have been greatly exaggerated. The government said that marijuana use, over time, can cause loss of brain cells. They said it can cause infertility. They even said that, in high enough doses, it could be directly responsible for death. The only problem was the source of all this information. The government received its information from lab reports, but most of these lab reports were from experiments that never took place, and were based on scientists' opinions on what the effects of long term use could be.
This gave marijuana a lingering bad reputation, which eventually led to the marijuana ban. Until the 1990's came along, these claims were never tested. Before then, anyone who wanted to conduct a study had to register it with the government to receive government funding....