Marijuana can benefit our country only if you let it benefit our country

The legalization of marijuana is an extremely controversial topic when regarding politics today. While there are states that have already legalized marijuana, it isn’t as easy as it sounds to do so. Marijuana is still illegal at a federal level, therefore states can make it legal but the federal government can come in and shut it all down. As of right now there are 21 states and the District of Columbia that have legalized medical marijuana. Two of those states, Colorado and Washington, have legalized marijuana for medical and recreational purposes.

More and more people are starting to argue that marijuana should be decriminalized, if not legalized, in the United States. It is obvious to that it would only benefit our country if it were legalized. Colorado has been the most known state for legalizing marijuana. People outside of Colorado try to make arguments against legalization by attempting to convince others that the people of Colorado regret legalizing marijuana. The fact is that even more people in Colorado are in favor of it, 6% of those people made that decision AFTER the legalization had been put into place. Police reports have also noted that crime has gone down 10.1% since 2013. They have also estimated that the marijuana industry in Colorado will bring in between $60 and $100 million dollars from tax revenue, licensing fees, and application fees.

Of course there is one problem that I should address: the fear of major drug dealers uprising to the legalization and taxation of marijuana. This would obviously hurt their business greatly, and is something important to keep in mind when thinking about legalizing marijuana. Nobody wants a war over drugs to come out of this, and this is a major reason why nothing has really been done yet. Regardless of this, I believe that our government could work out a way to have marijuana legalized and taxed in a safe way. I think its time to put emotions aside and look at decriminalizing and legalizing marijuana at an objective point of view and see how this could really help out our country.