Proposal 3: Why Marijuana Should Be Legal

There are many arguments for why marijuana should be legal:

Madeline Wolf wrote in an article on California, “Our country as a whole spends $68 billion a year on its prisoners, one-third of which are imprisoned for nonviolent drug crimes. About half of these criminals are marijuana offenders, which means one-sixth of our country’s prisoners are in jail for marijuana for marijuana-related charges.” She figures from these statistics, $11.3 billion could be saved from not imprisoning marijuana offenders. It was also found that marijuana users are not “tough guys” compared to other illicit drug users. This means they don’t cause harm nearly as much as other drug users.

Legalizing marijuana could be a great source of tax revenue for our country. In a report, Jeffery Miron, a visiting professor of economics at Harvard University, found that on average each state could gain $16 million additional tax revenue from legalizing marijuana. He also suggested that more than five states would see more than a $30 million tax revenue boost. With more people using the drug because of legality, this could possibly give more of a tax revenue than expected.

Many job opportunities will arise from the legalization of the drug. Ted Cox highlights in an article that there are 14 current jobs related to medical marijuana that could extend greatly if marijuana became legal. The 14 jobs include Recommending physicians, Physician assistants, Marijuana growers, Budtenders, Dispensary operators, Security guards, Dispensary administrators, Solar panel specialists, Delivery drivers, Lab techs, Marketing specialists, Lawyers, Insurance agents, and government jobs. It was found that jobs grew over 3000% in 2005 from the introduction of medical marijuana dispensaries giving many people who didn’t work before with jobs. Just think of the impact legalizing marijuana could have.

The National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA) found that the number of drug deaths in the US in a typical year is as follows: