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...an do cigarettes and is considered four times more dangerous (Courtwright 54). It dramatically increases the pulse rate and blood pressure during use. If marijuana is legalized, many project that lung cancer will increase as the amount of marijuana use increases (Miner 44). These are all valid arguments, but cigarette smoking is legal, a booming business, and causes the same exact problems. There are a number of myths associated with the use of marijuana and its effects on your body which people who are opposed to its decriminalization repeatedly cite. One of these in that Marijuana causes brain damage. This claim is based on a study of the rebus monkey by Dr. Robert Heath in the late 1970's. Heath's work was criticized for its insufficient sample size (only four monkeys), its failure to control experimental bias, and the misidentification of normal monkey brain structure as "damaged" (Hager 1). Actual studies of human populations of marijuana users have shown no evidence of damage to the brain (Hager 1). In fact, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) conducted two studies in 1977 and they showed no evidence of brain damage in heavy users of marijuana (Hager 1). Later that same year the AMA came out in favor of the decriminalizing of marijuana (Hager 1). That seems to me that the AMA wouldn't do that if it thought marijuana was damaging to the brain. Another myth is that marijuana damages the reproductive system. This is based on the Brown , Page 4 work of Dr. Gabriel Nahas, who experimented with tissue cells isolated in petri dishes. The cells were dosed with near lethal levels of cannibinoids (the intoxicating part of marijuana Nahas's generalizations from the petri dishes to human beings have been rejected by the scientific community as being invalid. Studies of actual human populations have failed to demonstrate that marijuana adversely affects the reproductive system. (Hagar 1). A persistent myth about marijuana is that it is a gateway drug, leading to the use of harder drugs. The Dutch partially decriminalized marijuana in the 1970's since then the use of heroin and cocaine has sharply decreased. The opposite of this gateway affect is also present the United States. In 1993 a study by the Rand corporation compared drug use in states that have decriminalized marijuana and those that have not. It found that in states where marijuana was more available, hard drug abuse as measured by emergency room episodes decreased. What science and real experience tells us is that marijuana tends to substitute for much harder drugs like alcohol, cocaine, and heroin (Hagar 1). Another misconception is that marijuana is more dangerous than alcohol. Extremely high doses of cannibinoids cause death. Extremely high doses is the key word here. Scientists have concluded that the ratio of cannibinoids needed to get a person intoxicated (stoned) relative to the amount necessary to kill him is 1 to 40,000. That means that to overdose on marijuana you would need to consume 40,000 times as much as you would to get stoned. The ratio of alcohol varies between 1 in 4 and 1 in 10. Over 5000 people die of alcohol overdoses each year, and no one has ever died from overdosing on pot (Hagar 2). These are just a few of the myths used various groups in order to keep marijuana illegal. Brown, Page 5 Along with these myths come the false belief that crime will increase if marijuana is legalized. Allen St. Pierre, Assistant National Director of the National Organization for the Reformation of Marijuana Laws (NORML), says that legalization will wipe out the already 60-billion dollar black market by placing marijuana in the open market (NORML information pack 3). It is the enforcement of the laws criminalizing the possession, use, manufacture, and distribution of marijuana that are causing the violent crime. This war on drugs is wasting the money, as well as the lives of American people. The widely recognized opinion maker William F. Buckley, Jr. writes: ...The time devoted to tracking down, arresting and then trying marijuana users and then trying marijuana users is perhaps the greatest exercise in lost time in contemporary activity. In the last two years, approximately 750,000 arrests were made in our mad, quixotic effort to stamp out marijuana. What this adds up to is millions of police hours spent on bootless missions, millions of hours of court time wasted, and millions of months in jail, using up space sorely needed to contain people who can't wait to get out in order to resume mugging and murdering (Buckley 39A). The drug laws imprison a multitude of otherwise law abiding people, a disproportionate number of them who are poor or minorities, for non violent acts that are directed at no one but themselves (ACLU 1). Instead of eliminating drugs, the prohibition of them just fosters an illegal industry able to inflate prices. This is hauntingly familiar to the prohibition era of gangsters present when alcohol was illegal in the 1920's. Because drugs are sold on the black market, they cause violence, deaths due to no quality regulation, and Brown, Page 6 diseases from sharing illegal drug paraphernalia (ACLU 1). The American Civil Liberties advocates the full decriminalization of the use, possession, manufacture, and distribution of drugs (ACLU 1). It does this for constitutional reasons. The following is an excerpt from their policy on drugs which was adopted in 1994: Criminalizing the use, possession, manufacture, and distribution of drugs violates the principle that the criminal law may not be used to protect individuals from the consequences of their own autonomous choices or to impose upon those individuals a majoritarian conception of morality and responsibility.....Enforcement of laws criminalizing possession, use, manufacture of distribution of drugs engender violations of civil liberties. Because drug enforcement is aimed at behavior which is inherently difficult to detect and does not involve a complaining "victim," it necessarily relies on law enforcement techniques -- such as use of undercover operations, arbitrary or invasive testing procedures, random or dragnet seizures, and similar measures -- that raise serious civil liberties concerns. These enforcement techniques lead in practice to widespread violations of civil liberties guarantees, including those secured by the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Amendments (ACLU 1). The supporters of legalization believe that it will benefit society in three ways, including revenue enhancement, medical benefits, and hemp production. The ingest argument for marijuana legalization is revenue enhancement for the U.S. Government. Much of the money will be saved due to less law enforcement, court time, and the cost of incarcerating prisoners who's only crime is possession. (Schmoek 3). The U.S. spent roughly one billion dollars on marijuana enforcement last year and the DEA has proposed a 400% Brown, Page 7 increase in anti-pot spending, yet domestic marijuana production has been reduced by only 10%. Further in 1989, 314,552 arrests were made for simple possession (NORML 2) Considering America's annual marijuana harvest was worth 50.7 billion in 1989 and 41.4 billion in 1988, $28 billion greater than corn at 31.4 billion, marijuana could become the leading agricultural product in the United States (NORML 2). With trade regulations, industry regulations and consumption taxes on he product NORML has estimated that legalization would produce over $40 billion in taxable revenue (NORML 3). As Congress debates the national debt, legalization would p...