Assignment on Legalization of Marijuana in Canada
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Added on 2020-04-07
Assignment on Legalization of Marijuana in Canada
Added on 2020-04-07
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LEGALIZATION OF MARIHUANA 2IntroductionRecently, Canada announced its plan of legalizing the recreational use of marihuana by the end of July 2015 and proved that it is a cool next door neighbour of United States. The legalization of the recreational use of marihuana was fulfilment of one of the campaign promises of the present Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau. Marihuana had been legal in the nation since 2001; though, this is a move for an industrialization large nation moving towards legalizing a controversial drug (Molly, 2017). In the following parts, the reasons for supporting legalization of marihuana have been presented. Legalization of MarihuanaJust because Canada has decided to legalize marihuana, it is not a good enough reason for it to be right. And so, there is a need to highlight compelling cases for legalizing recreational use of marihuana. The first point in favour of this is the medicinal properties of marihuana, which are well known (Welsh & Loria, 2014). In this regard, a crucial point which needs to be highlighted is that the view of legalizing marihuana is not just of Canada. 57% of the adults of United States, as per a 2016 Pew Research study, believe that marihuana needs to be made legal in the nation and only 37% believed that it should continue to be illegal (Geiger, 2016). So, not only the people of Canada support the legalization of marihuana, but also of the neighbouring nation, i.e., US. Another substantial point which is to be taken into consideration for legalizing pot is that it is not a gateway drug, as is the conception of the opponents of its legalization (Szalavitz, 2015). Even though the people are like to use other drugs instead of opting for marihuana smoking, there is nothing to show that the reason for this is pot. A major problem is continuing to not give marihuana a legal status is that the enforcement of the marihuana related contraventions continue to be an expensive affair and the resources which are used to punish these contraventions, can instead be put to use somewhere else. As per the Human Rights Watch and the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) 2016 report, around six million people were arrested in US alone for possessing marihuana (Williams, 2016). Added in this is the cost of keeping the individuals behind bars and the money and resources of the court used on such individual, which results in a big mess (Luis, 2016). One can also not deny the fact that legalization of marihuana would result in addition of billions of dollars to the economy of any nation, in a very quick manner. As per the article published by CNBC back in 2010, the earnings from legalization of pot would be vaguely around $10 billion to $120 billion for every year (Nelson, 2010). This infusion of money would boom any economy. Apart from this, a lot of money can be made from tax revenues, where tax is imposed after marihuana is legalized. This would provide government with additional cash, which can be used by it in different programs. Nearly $70 million were generated from July 2014 to June 2015 by Colorado, solely from the taxes imposed after marihuana was legalized (Sweet, 2015). Following that year, the amount which was brought in as taxes stood approximately at $200 million (Williams, 2017).
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