Weed. Pot. Grass. While I am all for a new green initiative, I don’t think we need to add these words to our everyday vocabulary.
As college students, we have a strong attraction to what we aren’t supposed to do. Underage drinking, illegal drugs, casual sex. It’s normal. We want our last hoorah before we inevitably enter into adulthood. We need to let off steam from endless homework, late work shifts and familial pressures. However, we don’t need an easier way to access simple stupidity.
Recreational marijuana should not be legalized. The only reason the majority of people would use it is to get high. Getting high slows down your reaction time, increases your appetite, increases your heart rate, increases your blood pressure and gives those telltale red, bloodshot eyes. Oh, and don’t forget the paranoia, anxiety and short-term memory loss. Now doesn’t that all sound like a great time?
Before you start jumping down my throat about how marijuana is helpful for medical cases, that’s fine, it is. However, I don’t think that a dosage of drug-induced relaxation is what the masses need. I am all for the CORRECT use of medical marijuana. That is completely fine. A simple Google search can give you all of the information you would ever need about medical marijuana.
I am NOT for the legalization of recreational marijuana. If you do not need marijuana for medical reasons, then you probably shouldn’t be using it.
There is no way to monitor a person’s reaction to marijuana, as every person reacts differently. There is also no way to test if someone is under the influence of marijuana (someone really should invent a breathalyzer for marijuana – weedalyzer?).
The argument that marijuana makes you more creative is also false, along with the thinking that it is impossible to be addicted to marijuana (it’s completely possible to form an addiction).
Cigarettes, you may say, are way more harmful than marijuana, and they are available at every sketchy gas station. They cause multiple health problems, not least of which cancer.
[quote]The fact that people compare marijuana to cigarettes and alcohol as “not as harmful” just emphasizes my feelings against its legalization. Is your best argument “We already sell drugs that hurt people, why not sell another?”[/quote]
I get it. I really do. Marijuana is fun to smoke because you get to experience something completely different from monotonous reality. If consistently feel the need to escape reality though, then something else might be wrong.
I have a very personal reason to dislike marijuana. I have watched too many friends go from casual weekend blunt-smokers to full-on drug addicts. They started with marijuana as a way to avoid life’s stresses, then crossed the threshold from marijuana to mushrooms, PCP, ecstasy and cocaine.
I watched a family member of mine jeopardize his future by smoking and dealing marijuana from his dorm room and then getting suspended from school for a semester.
I have seen no good come from the recreational use of marijuana. I only see people who feel the need to escape reality by taking the easy way out with a simple puff of smoke.