For nearly a century, a natural growing and historically abundant plant has been deemed illegal for United States citizens to possess. This plant, marijuana, was deemed a vile narcotic poison that endangered the nation’s collective conscious, putting the most innocent in marijuana’s sadistic path to self-destruction. These unverified, mislabeled, and malevolent propaganda scare tactics were continually perpetuated by government and media, creating a natural enticement for deviant rebellion within the youth of America to explore marijuana’s effects, birthing a generational gap of ideals within families that often involved steep irrevocable criminal penalties as a result.
Gerald Stern authored the article “Reforming Marijuana Laws” in 1972 in order to help display the inequalities and overall burden that enforcement of marijuana brought upon an already stretched court system (727). Predatory law enforcement used marijuana as motivation to practice unreasonable search and seizures, leading to a sweltering influx of persons passing through the court system. Many of the detained were barely beyond pubescent, criminally harmful to only the status quo, yet punished as if a violent threat. The act of leniency by prosecution upon a first time offender, bypassing the penal system in favor of state allocated fines and a permanent gavel stamp upon the users criminal record for all prospective employers or educational establishments to stereotype an individual’s character and self-worth
Stern went on to describe the injustice through inconsistency that was placed upon individuals who wanted to engage in smoking marijuana, which is harmful to the inhaler only (728), as non-violent as eating cheeseburger, and far harmless in compare with the social butterflies alcohol and cigarettes. Stern questions why the government even possesses the authority to punish a person for choosing to put a substance into their own body, as there are much more harmful and widely used intoxicants that are legal, though regulated by the government. In support with his oppositional stance against the unjust and unreasonable penalization for possessing a rather harmless plant, two committees affiliated with the American Bar Association declared as result of a longitudinal study that in their collective belief, marijuana should at least be decriminalized, as the benefits of adhering to the current law do not outweigh the negatives it imposes upon the United States citizens.
Works Cited
Stern, Gerald. "Reforming Marijuana Laws." American Bar Association Journal 58 (1972): 727-30.
