Argumentative Essay Sample: Marijuana Should Be Legal

For many decades, Marijuana has been seen as this dangerous drug that if you take then you are immediately condemned to having huge health problems and will eventually lead to a life of  crime and delinquency, when in fact this could not be further from the truth. Marijuana smoke is in fact actually less harmful to your lungs than the regular tobacco cigarettes, and although the rate of pot use is higher among offenders than nonoffenders, that definitely does not mean that pot causes criminal behavior. In my opinion I believe the legalization of marijuana is something that will eventually happen, but for no apparent reason we keep delaying it due to unnecessary concerns, and in my opinion this needs to stop.

The first and most basic reason that marijuana should be legal is that there is no good reason for it not to be legal. Some people ask 'why should marijuana be legalized?" but we should ask "Why should marijuana be illegal?" From a philosophical point of view, individuals deserve the right to make choices for themselves. The government only has a right to limit those choices if the individual's actions endanger someone else. This does not apply to marijuana, since the individual who chooses to use marijuana does so according to his or her own free will. The government also may have a right to limit individual actions if the actions pose a significant threat to the individual. But this argument does not logically apply to marijuana because marijuana is far less dangerous than some drugs which are legal, such as alcohol and tobacco.

The second important reason that marijuana should be legal is that it would save our government lots of money. In the United States, all levels of government (federal, state, and local authorities) participate in the "War on Drugs." We currently spend billions of dollars every year to chase peaceful people who happen to like to get high. These people get locked up in prison and the taxpayers have to foot the bill. We have to pay for food, housing, health care, attorney fees, court costs, and other expenses to lock these people up. This is extremely expensive! We could save billions of dollars every year as a nation if we stop wasting money locking people up for having marijuana. In addition, if marijuana were legal, the government would be able to collect taxes on it, and would have a lot more money to pay for effective drug education programs and other important causes.

To conclude, the mere fact that marijuana is still illegal in the year 2021 is quite absurd, we spend billions of dollars every year fighting the “War on Drugs”, for something that is very much less harmful than regular cigarettes, and in fact provide several medicinal benefits apart from the normal recreational use. There is no real reason marijuana should remain illegal and decriminalization of it is something that this country heavily demands.