What Is the Official Government Given Reason for Marijuana Being Illegal?
Question by No Chance Without Batman: What is the official government given reason for marijuana being illegal?
I often hear the real reason is because it can’t be efficiently taxed like tobacco and alcohol because you can just grow your own marijuana at home and they wouldn’t be able to say “that’s illegal because it’s inconvenient for us”, so they just clump it together with all the genuinely bad drugs like heroin in some big “evil drugs” image.
Is this the officially claimed reason, literally the Government saying “we want your money so you can’t have a cheap alternative”? I can’t imagine health issues being a problem seeing as they’re fine with tobacco (lung cancer spreading to themselves and those they smoke around) and alcohol (damages brain cells and causes accidents and violence affecting the drinkers and those they’re drunk around).
I especially can’t see it as a self harm issue: Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think there are any laws against self harm. If I cut myself, I won’t get a fine or jail time for it, so the whole “we’re going to fine you/ give you jail time for your own good because that stuff is bad for your health” wouldn’t make sense.
So what IS their claimed reason?
@garrytoo: They made it illegal because it’s against the law? That makes no sense. It only because against the law when they made it illegal, and I’m asking what happened beforehand that made them think “shucks, we can’t let this stuff stay legal”.
To those saying “it’s believed to be harmful”, tobacco and alcohol are KNOWN to be VERY harmful, yet not only legalised, but used to make a tidy profit. Harmfullness of the drug clearly isn’t the issue until it gets to the harm levels of stuff like heroin and cocaine. Even addictiveness, tobacco and alcohol aren’t exempt from.
Best answer:
Answer by garrytoo
It’s against the law.
Answer by Joshua
I think a lot of it has to do with our inability to confirm that drivers are under the influence in a quick, efficient manner. I’m not sure if that’s an official reason, but in my opinion that is the biggest roadblock to marijuana legalization. As soon as we develop a quick test to determine whether someone is driving under the influence of marijuana, we will likely see it legalized. At the very least, that would be one more argument against marijuana legalization invalidated.
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The government believed it was dangerous to people. See the movie “Reefer Madness,” which was popular in the 1930’s. I think you can find it on You Tube and similar sites.
I don’t think they’re dumb enough to give an official reason, because official reasons can be challenged.
The basic reason is that it is believed to be harmful. As to how harmful, people can debate. Another reason is its association with crime. The problem is, it is now criminal and inseperable from crime, so it is hard to know whether, if legalized, it would still be associated with violence and other crimes (and thus give room for such a correlation / cause-effect presumption).
States are now experimenting with marijuana laws. The federal law is likely to let up over time; the problem is Inertia. Inertia exists in public mindsets about the harms of marijuana (IN MY EXPERIENCE, most people that think most severely of it have never used and are unaware several of their close friends or even some family members use). There is also legal intertia: even if and once people change their views, there is a waryness to change laws that don’t immediately require changing because there is no real consequence to leaving things as they are, whereas there is always a risk things will go wrong with change and new legislation.
Hope this has helped.
They legalized it by vote in Colorado but now they’re second guessing cause they’re not sure they’ll make as much money as they were told they would. I think they would though cause most people prefer not to grow it themselves. They’re gonna blow the statistics out of proportion with the thought that everyone who cares for the plant is going to grow it. I guess they’re looking at the worse scenerio.
In all reality the government doesn’t care for any recreational drugs. If they could hack alcohol they probably would. They’re trying to run the tobacco companies out. Contrary to popular belief tobacco taxes DO NOT pay for the fallout of its use.
Do you want the 100% historical truth? Here it is:
In the 1930s, this dude named William Randolph Hearst was heavily affiliated with the paper industry. Marijuana/ hemp is actually a more economic substitute for this because 1 tree for hemp is the equivalent of 4 trees we use for paper.
Hearst didn’t want to lose a penny, and this would crush his net worth. So, he and politicians endorsed this movie “Reefer Madness” an incredibly biased propaganda film about how marijuana causes people to go crazy and kill each other. They also did horrible tests on monkeys in labs by putting gas masks on them and burning pounds of cannabis indica, (the weed that gets you high) into the animals’ lungs.
This spawned the myth about how weed kills brain cells. If normally ingested, less than a few grams of weed on a strictly occasional will actually stimulate the mind with positive effects for creativity (the right side brain). The monkeys, aren’t people, so this was way off from the beginning, and the monkeys basically became brainless from too much marijuana.
In 1937, the government thought that the people would buy into this. So, they passed a law in 1937 that said, the possession, selling or ingestion of marijuana *indica* is illegal (and today it is classified as dangerous as heroin).
The main goal was to get rid of the cannabis sativa (the industrial kind used for paper and what not.)
But the government seriously raped marijuana and today ruins the lives of people for just simple possession.
The claimed reason that it is “it is dangerous to society” yet alcohol and cigarettes are legal and faaaar more dangerous than marijuana. Nobody has died from ingestion of marijuana itself. If you die from doing stupid stuff while on it, that’s your fault. The same can go for alcohol, yet it is still legal. Once marijuana is legalized (which people project it to be legal within the next decade) it will hurt not only the paper industry, but the alcohol and tobacco industry as well.
All of this is completely factual. Look this up if you have a doubt about any of it.