My colleague, Jane Kim recently
published an original editorial making an argument against the legalization of
marijuana. Due to my last blog post concerning the positive aspects of cannabis
I thought it would be an excellent opportunity to not only express my beliefs
on the topic but to also be able to fully understand the other side of this
argument.
Jane Kim’s main argument throughout
his blog post is that marijuana is “harmful to kids and adolescents”. He
supported this claim with numerous statistics proving that cannabis is
currently being used and sold by teenagers. My problem with this is that the
simple fact is that this shows that marijuana is being used already. Although the legalization of cannabis would increase the use of it, keeping it banned won't change these numbers. I would like to point out an option that Jane Kim did not address. An easy solution to any problems concerning kids and adolescents with legal marijuana is to have a 21 year old age restriction. This would ensure that children and teenagers are still not allowed to use cannabis, making positive that there will not be any more use from teenagers then there currently are.
I believe that making marijuana only legal to people of ages 21 and over will ensure that teenagers are kept away from this drug, as much as we can. In conclusion, I agree with the points my colleague made against the legalization of marijuana, but with that being said, I believe there to be many solutions, such as the one I mentioned.
