Stimson, Charles. “Why Legalizing Pot Is a Bad Idea.” dailysignal.com. Daily Signal, 30 November 2014. Web. 16 July 2015.
As criminal law expert Charles Stimson wrote in this article, people should think twice before they decide legalizing pot is a good idea. It has already had a major effect on Colorado in which it has been legalized for both medical and recreational uses.
Stimson introduces his article by arguing that legalization is not inevitable, contrary to what “pot pushers want you to believe.” Legalization activists use the states that have already legalized marijuana as success examples to try and convince us that legalizing marijuana isn’t a terrible idea, however, if you really look at the statistics and actual facts, Stimson states, we are able to see the negative factors behind weed’s legalization.
According to Stimson, Dr. Kevin Sabet (who is the former senior advisor to President Obama’s drug policy office) claims that “the average strength of today’s marijuana is five to six times what is was in the 1960s and 1970s.” Knowing this fact in itself, according to Stimson, should be a huge red flag that we should pause before determining whether we do or do not agree with the legalization of marijuana.
There are specific negative side effects that have been caused by the legalization of pot in Colorado, states Stimson, and a report by a federal grant-funded agency found the following changes have occurred since it became legal: an increase in youth consumption, almost 50 percent of Denver arrestees tested positive for marijuana, marijuana-related emergency-room visits increased 57 percent from 2011-2013, and marijuana-related hospitalizations have increased 82 percent since 2008. As if these were not eye-opening enough, Stimson goes on to say that “adolescent marijuana users have lower educational attainment than non-using peers.” Taking these effects into consideration, Stimson points out, we can better understand the reasons behind certain employers and parents who are against marijuana legalization.
I found this article to be useful because most of what I have read and researched about marijuana legalization usually leaned toward it being a positive thing or simply inevitable. In this article, though, we are given a the opposite perspective of pot legalization based on negative effects marijuana has had. I think others will find this useful because it sheds light on the cons that would come along with legalization of marijuana based on actual data that has been taken in places where it is already legal.
