A look at the push for legal marijuana
by Dustin Plutzer.For the first time in US history, the majority of Americans now support the legalization of marijuana. According to a Gallup poll released last month, 62 percent of people age 18-29 are ready to pass the dutch, and evidently their parents are too.The same poll showed that 56 percent of those ages 30-49 are joining the cipher, with 49 percent of people ages 50-64 also ready to saddle up. But how do CCNY students feel about giving a green light to ganja?Chavonne Hodges, a 22-year-old English major at City College, says, “I think that marijuana should be legalized mainly because it is an herb not a manufactured drug. Not to mention there are a lot of benefits from smoking it.”A current bill introduced in June of 2011 by Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) would decriminalize marijuana nationally. While not exactly making it legal, the bill would create a policy that puts a halt to Federal enforcement of marijuana possession and distribution, leaving the issue in the States’ hands.Sixteen states have passed some type of legislation allowing doctors to prescribe marijuana for medical use. In fact, medical marijuana is even legal in our nation’s capital, Washington D.C.. But many advocates of a broader call to legalize marijuana for general use point to other benefits.According to some estimates are up to 60 million people toke up in the United States, and projected tax revenue from legalizing and taxing marijuana sales could reach between $40-$110 billion dollars each year.There is a flip side of the coin. The American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM) issued a statement on Halloween solidifying its position against the legalization of marijuana. In the report, the ASAM labels marijuana as an addictive substance with the potential to have negative mental, emotional and behavioral effects on users.CCNY communications major Latoya Jackson, 22, has her own concerns. “People who smoke marijuana usually just want to get high, chill out, eat food and relax," she says. "But once it’s accessible to younger kids, like in a store, the more of an opportunity younger kids will have to start smoking.”A study by the Rhode Island Hospital Researchers leads others to believe that this is not the case. According to the study of 32,750 middle school and high school students released on November 2nd, there was no difference in marijuana use among youths in any year from 1997-2009. Medical marijuana was legalized in Rhode Island in 2006.This is sure to continue to be a heated debate in the upcoming months, and has potential to become an issue in the 2012 elections. Currently on opencongress.com, a site that makes it easy to track the progress of open legislation, 94 percent of those viewing the legislation support it. For others like Latoya Jackson, there won’t be any studies or polls that could change her opinion.“We’re people. We make bad choices and we do things that we’re not supposed to, it’s just about how easy it is to get it,” she says. The American Medical Association recently requested that the Federal government reconsider the status of marijuana as a banned substance for greater access to the drug to conduct medical studies, and will not issue a statement supporting its use either as a recreational drug or for medicinal benefit.