What’s left to be mentioned is the question of, what happens if medical marijuana is not legalized and no changes are made? In order to answer that question, all you have to do is look at the current state of our country. The biggest implication of this is its effect on incarceration. The US is the world leader in amount of people incarcerated…by almost a million people. That is almost double the next closest which is china. This would be fine if we were locking away murders but that is not the case. In the US a marijuana arrest is made every 42 seconds. Let’s also face facts here as well, people are still going to smoke weed whether it be medically or recreationally. So how does it make sense that we continue to devote resources in arresting those who are just trying to use it for medical purposes? Jail facilities and officers could be put to much more useful work trying to stop murders and thieves instead of marijuana “criminals”.
By legalizing it medically you then eliminate a large portion of people buying illegal drugs and save time and resources in to stop these patients who are viewed as criminals. The government is also losing money from not legalizing marijuana as well. That is millions of dollars in taxes that can be attained just be removing a commonly bought item off the black market. If anything legalization would help would regulating drug trafficking and increase safety for the consumer as well. There doesn’t seem to be a perfect answer to how and if medical marijuana should be legalized by but just by looking at the window in our own backyards we can see that our current state is not the answer.
The Tar Heel State of Affairs 
The statistic you put in of the marijuana arrests being made every 42 seconds really stood out to me. It makes me think of how obvious it is that we have a problem with our incarceration system. We clearly invest far too much money in punishment for marijuana use (which private people benefit from in the prison system) and imprint people arrested for this with a mark they will have to carry for the rest of their lives, and for something that has little valid moral issues. Imagine if the money and effort which is put into this were redirected toward helping people. What if every 42 seconds, a person in need were offered help by the government? We could use money collected from marijuana taxes to go towards programs like this. So much energy goes into slapping people on the wrist, what if we changed that to patting people on the back? Thanks for raising these concerns and opening the discussion!
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