Your assignment is to prepare and submit a paper on why marijuana should be legalized.

It is clear from the discussion that the economic feasibility of decriminalizing marijuana has become a much-discussed subject in recent years. The federal government presently spends a lot of capital on law enforcement to combat distributors and producers of drugs. By legalizing drugs this could eradicate much of the profit, bloodshed, and corruption of that trade. If legalizing drugs is to have a positive effect on the crime rate, drugs must be made both inexpensive and available. Studies have repetitively suggested that prohibiting marijuana in the U.S. has not shown to be efficient or effective. According to the Drug Policy Alliance, “U.S. federal, state and local governments have spent hundreds of billions of dollars trying to make America ‘drug-free.’ Yet heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine, and other illicit drugs are cheaper, purer and easier to get than ever before. The damage done by the ‘war on drugs’ to underprivileged countries that produce the drugs and poor persons within the wealthy nations who buy the drugs exceeds any benefits achieved by the current bans. These government’s drug laws have not produced the desired results of reducing drug use, instead, a great number of innocent people have had their lives ruined. “Many critics argue that the increased toughness of that policy has done more harm than good. Some go so far as to suggest that drugs should simply be legalized”. If marijuana were legalized, governments would have the ability to regulate quality and, like alcohol, the ages allowed to purchase and the ability to add safety warnings to help educate users.