Carise, Deni. “Legalizing Marijuana – The Real Costs.” The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 23 July 2013. Web 15 July 2015.
Deni Carise, a Clinical Psychologist known for studying substance abuse and mental health has authored several publications in professional journals. In her work “Legalizing Marijuana – The Real Costs.”, Carise reveals the consequences of legalizing marijuana. She debunks the idea that marijuana legalization will increase revenue in our society by emphasizing the costs of the repercussions caused by increased smoking of the drug. She precisely points out that marijuana legalization will result in more medical problems and a strain on our public systems.
Carise uses her knowledge of behavioral health to contend that marijuana affects the brain’s ability to function. According to her, “marijuana has been proven to impair motor coordination and reaction time”. She doesn’t believe that people can function properly while high, and expects there to be a significant rise in accidents due to mental impairment if the drug was no longer illicit. However her argument doesn’t end there with a claim to more vehicle crashes, she stresses how emergency room visits will also sky-rocket because of the substance’s power to deteriorate the brain.
According to Carise marijuana is an addicting drug, and persistent use of it can affect the cognitive processes to a devastating state which is impossible to recover from. She writes that this mental decline is, “associated with the onset of major mental illnesses, including psychosis, schizophrenia, depression, and anxiety.” The cost to treat mental conditions such as these over a long period of time are astounding. She insists that the more an individual smokes marijuana; the greater the neuropsychological decline.
Due to marijuana’s ability to destroy coordination and cause mental illnesses, Carise declares that public systems, such as ERs will accumulate patients. She notes that, “in 2011, marijuana was involved in 455,668 emergency room visits nationwide”. An increase in traffic accidents and mental problems will cause hospitals to have an upsurge of patients, and the tax revenue from selling marijuana legally would be spent on tending to marijuana victims in overcrowded hospitals.
This source is significant because it highlights certain costs of legalizing marijuana in our society that are often overlooked. Though I recognized marijuana’s ability to impair the brain, I never thought that it could cause severe mental illnesses such as psychosis and schizophrenia. Others may find this interesting too, and consider how money from marijuana taxes would ultimately be spent on treating and rehabilitating the individuals that are harmed by smoking the drug.
