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It is no stretch of the imagination that the “War on Drugs” has failed in the United States and that the drugs are actually winning. The reason for this is that our legislative practices have been not achieving their objective goals. It is no surprise that the 2016 election will in fact be the “Marijuana Election” because, ironically, Marijuana could be the key to mitigating our country’s loss in the “War on Drugs.” First and foremost, I am not going to state that drugs should be entirely legal; a notion such as that would be ridiculous. That being said, I am going to advocate towards a partial legalization of drugs that benefits our sentencing laws, tax dollars, and potential revenue from drug sales.
Tax dollars are an important aspect of the drug war that is an enormous burden to citizens. Tax dollars are also tied to the overcrowding of the prisons. The reason for this is that Americans are taxed and are essentially paying for petty criminal’s jail time. This hardly seems fair given that these individuals are not the sort that we need to be locking up. Ideally, we want to lock up the potential school shooters or drug lords, not the Rastafarians. If we reduce the sentencing, we will inevitably lower taxes, which would make the American republic rejoice. That being said, for all other dangerous drugs, it would be wise to keep the sentencing the same due to the severity of side effects that those substance cause on society as a whole.
Another aspect of the “marijuana election” that politicians are missing is the potential for revenue for the state. The potential for profits in this industry is enormous because the state could tax an insane rate on the marijuana and put that money towards our deceit. This would be an enormous benefit to the United States not to mention that perhaps Americans could use the marijuana for medicinal purposes. Marijuana has been linked to helping Cancer patients and many other medical conditions. Thus, why not put a tax on something beneficial and stop wasting law enforcements time with something that could benefit the American public both fiscally and medically?
