Burning More Green for Prohibition

Burning More Green for Prohibition

The war on drugs in the United States has been going on since President Reagan was in office. Marijuana seems to be the warʼs main focus. Marijuana or cannabis is less harmful and more useful than alcohol and tobacco combined, yet the government spends over 10 billion dollars a year on prohibition. Marijuana, in its natural form, is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man (US Department of Justice). The legalization of marijuana would save the government billions of dollars, and can be used in many other ways besides as a recreational drug.
Cannabis/hemp was our planetʼs largest agricultural crop and an important

industry of products and enterprises up until 1883 AD (Wallach). Hemp has many environmental, industrial, and medical uses. It can be used to make food, fuel, clothing, cosmetics, paints, paper, building materials, and more. Hemp is the standard fiber of the world. It has great strength and durability and is used to make over 5,000 textile products (Wallach). Paper made from hemp is stronger, finer, and longer-lasting than wood-based paper. Using hemp instead of other harmful materials could save millions of dollars.
Hemp has been used as medicine for ages. In India, the use of hemp extracts as

a remedy was described before 1000 B.C. (Mikuriya 34). In 1839, the therapeutic use of cannabis was introduced to Western medicine. Cannabis was described to have medicinal properties such as analgesia, anticonvulsant action, appetite stimulation, ataraxia, antibiotic properties and low toxicity. It has been used for the management of

pain, chronic neurologic diseases, convulsive disorders, migraine headache, anorexia, mental illness, and bacterial infections (Mikuriya 35). With many important medicinal uses, we should take advantage of this remarkable plant.
What are the harmful effects of marijuana? Many people believe different things,

because the government has done biased...