Chi NguyenSierra Law

Con: Should marijuana use for recreational purposes be legalized in California?

On November 2, 2010, California voters were given the opportunity to vote for Proposition 19, as known as Regulate, Control and Tax Cannabis Act of 2010. However, the result was that Proposition 19 has failed. Saying yes to Proposition 19 would have made it legal for adults over twenty-one to possess up to one ounce of marijuana. It would also have been legal for people to grow marijuana on up to 25 square feet of their property. Legalization would also mean that local governments would have been free to raise their limits on cultivation and possession as well as to license, regulate and tax sales of cannabis. (Doherty, 2011) Although Proposition 19 has failed, it might be the beginning of the end for marijuana prohibition. It is important for everyone to have the most basic knowledge of why legalization is a bad idea and how it will negatively affect the state in different aspects. Firstly, consuming marijuana can cause a variety of adverse health issues for users. It can affect different parts of the body such as the heart, the lung, and the brain. Secondly, if marijuana becomes legal for recreational usage it does not guarantee that young people will not misinterpret marijuana effects on health and society. Since legalization of marijuana is for adults twenty-one and older it will still be illegal for adolescents to purchase the drug which will lead to the black market continuing to exist. Thirdly, legalizing marijuana will create problems for society. Legalization will increase the use of marijuana and lead to increased social problems that will outweigh the tax benefits. Also, marijuana would only be legal under state law, not federal, which could result in a huge loss in federal funding. We agree that there are some benefits to legalizing marijuana but we firmly believe that the costs outweigh the benefits.

Health impact associated with smoking marijuanaOne of the major concerns of legalizing marijuana is that marijuana use can have a

cumulative impact on health overtime. The active ingredient in marijuana, THC, has been reported to affect the dopamine reward system of the brain. This is the same neurochemical process that reinforces dependence on other addictive drugs. (Joffe & Yancy, 2004, e632) Once someone becomes used to the effects of marijuana and the way it makes them feel, they may develop dependence to it. Research estimates that about 9% of users develop an addiction to marijuana but this number increased to 17% among users who start young and up to 25%-50% for daily users. (NIDA. 2010) Scientists have also discovered that withdrawal from marijuana causes emotional stress. This is because it is linked to the corticotropin-releasing factor that is the same brain chemical that has been linked to anxiety and stress during withdrawal from other drugs such as alcohol and cocaine. Although there are no known chemicals in marijuana that make it addictive, long-term marijuana abuse can lead to addiction of the drug. Addiction here refers to compulsive drug seeking as well as abuse despite knowing the harmful effects of marijuana upon functioning in the context of family, school, work, etc. (NIDA, 2010) When a person uses marijuana in order to cope with problems, they develop even more of an addiction to it. Studies have also shown that there is an association between marijuana use and increased rates of anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts, and schizophrenia. These adverse effects can be greatly amplified in young adults because their brains and bodies have not finished maturing. High doses of marijuana can produce an acute psychotic reaction that can trigger the onset or a relapse of schizophrenia in vulnerable individuals.

Another health concern is respiratory problems. Regular marijuana smokers have more symptoms of chronic bronchitis than non-smokers. (Hall, 1998) Marijuana smoke has been found to contain 50-70 percent more carcinogenic hydrocarbons than tobacco smoke. (ONDCP, 2010) Carcinogens are irritated to the lungs. Furthermore, tobacco smokers generally do not inhale as deeply and hold their breath as long as marijuana users do. It means that smoking marijuana further increase the lungs’ exposure to carcinogenic smoke. Although marijuana smoking has yet been proven to be associated with lung cancer, nonetheless, marijuana smokers do have the same respiratory problems as tobacco smokers. Symptoms include daily cough and phlegm production, frequent acute chest illness, and risk of lung infections. (NIDA, 2010) The difference between marijuana and cigarette packing is that marijuana is not filtered and is packed more loosely than cigarettes; therefore it burns at a higher temperature leading to an increase in risk of thermal injury to the lungs. (Weiss, 2008) Marijuana also weakens a person’s immunity to infectious diseases such as pneumonia.

Besides, marijuana has been known to adversely affect the heart and the heart rate. Marijuana has been proven to increase the heart rate by 20-100 percent shortly after intake. This increased heart rate can last for up to three hours. Marijuana also increases the chance of having a heart attack by a 4.8-fold increase within the first hour of smoking it. (NIDA, 2010) This is because it increases the heart rate, affects the heart rhythms, causes palpitations and causes arrhythmia. People who already have heart problems or who are at risk because of their age can be affected more than the general population.

Smoking marijuana, in addition, affects the brain in number of ways. When someone smokes marijuana, THC, or tetrahydrocannabinol, rapidly travels from the lungs into the bloodstream, which carries the chemical to the brain and other organs throughout the body. THC acts upon specific sites in the brain, called cannabinoid receptors. According to the National Institutes on Drug Abuse, the highest density of cannabinoid receptors are found in parts of the brain that influence pleasure, memory, thinking, concentrating, sensory and time perception, and coordinated movement. (NIDA, 2010) The use of marijuana slows the learning process down, impairs memory, and impairs motor function. Researchers have done studies which indicate that marijuana does have impairment to driving ability. Both cannabis and alcohol increase the time that a person brake and start. Studies have shown a significant decrement in marijuana smokers’ ability to perform divided-attention task, such as driving. It is more dangerous when one uses more because the larger the dose of marijuana used, the more impairment found on these mental processes. (Dell & Snyder, 1977) The black market

The black market will continue to exist because of youth’s incentive to use marijuana illegally even after legalization. If marijuana were legal, it would become normalized for young people because they would see people around them, such as their family and friends, using marijuana. This would also decrease youth’s perceptions of risk associated with marijuana. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Technical report, the number of adolescents who use marijuana is inversely related to the perceived risk associated with marijuana. (Joffe & Yancy, 2004, e635) During the period in which Dutch prosecution of marijuana-related offenses became virtually nonexistent, the number of young adults between 18 and 20 years of age who had tried marijuana went from 15% to 44% and the proportion who reported using marijuana within the last 30 days went from 8.5% to 18.5%. This reflects what would happen if marijuana were legal in California. Also, legalizing marijuana will increase the use of marijuana among

adults and some of these adults might be parents. Adolescents are greatly influence by parental drug use and seeing parents doing marijuana will lessen their perceived risks greatly. Under the proposed law, marijuana would still be illegal for youths under 21, therefore youths would still have to use illegal means in order to obtain marijuana. This would leave them with several illegal options. They could purchase marijuana from drug dealers, obtain fake identification card to purchase marijuana, or have their older friends buy it for them. The problems that are currently associated with youths and marijuana would only be amplified with marijuana legalization.

Social issuesFinally, legalizing marijuana will create problems for society as well as worsen current

public safety problems. “Illegality of marijuana helps to keep prices higher and because drug use is sensitive to price, especially among young users, higher prices help to keep use rates relatively low.” (ONDCP, 2010) If marijuana became legal, the price would drop and consumption would increase. Experiences with other drugs, such as alcohol and tobacco, show that legalization has this effect. An increase in usage would lead to an increase in negative effects for society. These negative effects would range from increased health problems and costs, increased use in youths to increased crime. One big problem with marijuana is that there is no current scale to measure impairment caused by marijuana. This makes it very difficult to measure marijuana’s actual impact on public safety, especially when paired with other substances. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, marijuana is the second most common drug factor in crashes following alcohol. Severe impairment occurs especially when marijuana is paired with other substances. When marijuana is paired with alcohol, it causes a 36% decrease in reaction time. In another word, the mean reaction time increased from 4.65 seconds to 6.33 seconds. (Sadovsky, 2000) This is a huge amount of time in terms of reacting while driving or operating machinery.

Yet another concern is the public costs of attempting to regulate marijuana. These social public costs would outweigh the revenue brought in from legal sales, including the tax revenue. It is impossible to estimate the exact numbers but current alcohol and tobacco numbers can reasonably provide an idea of these costs. According to the Office of National Drug Control Policy, in 2007 federal and state tax revenues for alcohol total $14.5 billion dollars yet these amounts are less than 10% of the $185 billion in alcohol-related health costs, criminal justice, and lost workplace productivity. Tax revenue for tobacco currently yields $25 billion yet $200 billion is spent on the social costs of smoking. (ONDCP, 2010) From these numbers, we are positive that the costs and tax benefits of marijuana legalization would follow the same pattern with alcohol and tobacco. Also, under the proposed law, policy makers would likely continue the penalization of large-scale cultivation and distribution of the drug outside the legalized framework. Therefore, the cost of enforcement against unlawful manufacture, trafficking and distribution illegally would possibly remain comparable with that of today. (Caputo & Ostrom, 1994, p484) In another word, legalization of the drug would not eliminate the costs that are currently spent to enforce and penalize illegal activities surrounding marijuana. As the social public costs rise due to increase in use, the tax revenue from legal sale would not be able to cover all of these costs combined.

Nevertheless, a major setback is that if California legalized marijuana then it would still be illegal under federal law. According to the Federal Controlled Substances Act, the federal government could potentially cut funding to schools and non-profit agencies. This amount of cut funding could total up to $9.4 billion. (Snavely, John, Ed.D, 2010) This also means that not only

would the state of California not be able to profit from marijuana legalization, but we might as well lose the financial support from the federal government for school districts and other non-profit agencies. Moreover, another impediment would come from the fact that under the proposed law, hundreds of the state’s city and county governments could set their own regulations for growing, selling, using and taxing marijuana. This would be a recipe for regulatory chaos and attempting to regulate marijuana would be very costly.

As attractive as a potential tax revenue source as it might seem, marijuana legalization would definitely lead to several negative issues for California. The health effects including psychological dependency, respiratory problems and brain problems are known to using marijuana chronically. Inhaling smoke into the lungs is never good even though its effects aren’t as severe as tobacco and other illicit drugs. Legalization would have a great influence on the way young people perceive the drug and its use. They would most likely become ignorant about the health effects of cannabis smoking as well as the negative consequences on society. Adding to the problem, California would not be able to cover the social cost arise from marijuana smoking legality with the tax revenue that the proponents of legalization are hoping to collect. In comparison with alcohol and tobacco, marijuana does not cause as much harm in terms of both financial and health-related costs. However, permitting the legal use of marijuana, the second most common drug factor in crashes, would be absurdly inconsistent and illogical practices of the legal system.

Rebuttal argument for the Pro side

The first argument that the proponents of marijuana legalization have is that legalization is a great potential revenue source for the state. According to the pro side, marijuana is California’s number one cash crop in revenue a year and that the tax revenue is estimated at $1.4 billion dollars annually. They also state that legalizing marijuana would lead to a price decrease of 50%, which would then increase consumption by 40% and then an excise tax that would decrease this added consumption by 11%. Aside from the tax revenue brought in from legalization, however, there is the social cost associated with it. Legalizing marijuana would bring in tax revenue but it is not possible to predict how this amount would weigh against the added social costs of legalization. A way to compare these costs is demonstrated above with the alcohol and tobaccos costs. Legalizing marijuana would cause marijuana related costs to increase. The marijuana social costs include medical and treatment cost, production loss, research and education, etc. In the advent of legalization, there would also have to be money spent to regulate the market as well as to enforce the new laws surrounding recreational marijuana use. Although we agree that the marijuana market is a very appealing source for tax revenue, we can’t ignore the costs of legalization that would likely outweigh the amount of tax revenue brought in from legal sales. The potential revenue source argument would be irrelevant considering these social costs.

Secondly, the fact that government regulation and cost reductions in prohibition occurred if marijuana were to be legal is hard to accept. They state that the government would be able to control the purity, potency, labeling, advertising and availability of marijuana. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Technical report, legalization actually could result in advertising campaigns for marijuana’s use, which might directly target adolescents. We could easily examine the same problem with tobacco. (Joffe & Yancy, 2004, e634) Tobacco companies continued marketing to youth while disavowing any efforts to do so even after the

Comprehensive Tobacco Settlement, prohibition of advertising of tobacco toward youth, was implemented. Therefore, attempt to control the advertising of marijuana after legalization may as well be difficult to implement. Another trouble is enforcing the purity and potency of legal marijuana. If marijuana were to become legal, the law states that it would be legal to grow and cultivate up to 25 square feet of marijuana for personal use. It would be very complicated, if not impossible, to control the purity and potency of this personal marijuana. Moreover, it would also be very tricky to make sure that this supposedly personal marijuana be used personally.

The pro side also mentions that California spent nearly an estimate of $1.9 billion in law enforcement costs for marijuana due to police resources, prosecutorial and judicial resources as well as correctional resources. Legalizing marijuana would not make these costs disappear. With number of use likely increases following legalization, we cannot guarantee that people wouldn’t misuse the drug then drive under the influence. Because as we stated earlier, marijuana is the second most common drug factor in crashes following alcohol even when the drug is not legal; then we have a reason to believe that the number of driving under influence of marijuana might increase after the drug is legal. The cost of accidents and medical treatment are expected to increase as a result. Also, it is more difficult to know for a fact that someone drives under the influence of marijuana because testing for impairment of marijuana is more evasive and costly than testing for impairment of alcohol. A urine test, blood test or hair test must be administered in order to test this. These tests are costly to implement and could take up to a few hours to get result. We also have to take into account the costs for regulating the market, which would still involve police resources, prosecution and correctional resources.

Last but not least, the argument of legalization taking away the money from drug cartels and black market is also invalid. California is just one of the fifty-two states in the United State marijuana market, therefore legalizing marijuana in only California would not have a huge impact on the drug cartels revenues. We definitely agree that legalization would not completely eliminate the black market and that legalization would increase supply and decrease prices. However, we do not consent with the explanation that decreases in prices would lead to less crime at the border and an overall safer society. According to the Office of National Drug Control Policy, marijuana only makes up for a portion of the proceeds gained by criminal organizations that make profit from drug distribution, human trafficking and other criminal activities, so these groups would not stop continuing to operate because of legalization of marijuana. Furthermore, higher taxes on marijuana would likely to provoke the drug cartel to undercut the legal prices so that they could keep their market share. With the increased demand for marijuana resulting from legalization, these groups and the demand for cheaper marijuana might even grow stronger. (ONDCP, 2010)

If marijuana were to be legal, adults over twenty-one of age would be able to possess marijuana and there would be no guarantee that they would not give them to youth under 21. Having it legal would definitely decriminalize marijuana in the mind of youth, which makes them more likely to use it, especially when they could easily get marijuana from older adult than from drug dealers. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Technical Report on the potential impact on youth of marijuana legalization, adolescents who think that marijuana is relatively easy to get are approximately 2.5 times more likely to use the drug compared to those who consider it hard to get. (Joffe & Yancy, 2004, e636) Legalizing marijuana may make the borders safer to some extent but it will not protect our youths from having marijuana readily available and decriminalized. The American Journal of Nursing estimated that about 14 percent of Americans older than 12 have tried smoking marijuana at least once. (Dell & Snyder, 1977,

630) Of these, about 50 percent continue smoking. We cannot seem to calculate specifically how these figures change after legalization, however, we could believe that the percentage would likely increase due to perception of risk of the drug decreasing. Because marijuana use at an early age is likely to affect educational achievement, legalization of marijuana then would have huge impact on the younger generation. Early marijuana users have shown in studies to accomplish less in high school. As a result, adult occupational status of these users would be affected negatively due to low achievement in schools. (Green & Ritter, 2000, p41)

As we mentioned earlier, because marijuana would only be legal under state law, not federal, there could be huge repercussions on our society and our schools. Not only the federal government could cut funding to school districts and non-profit agencies, but the danger also lies under the federal Drug-Free Workplace Act of 1988. It states that employers who receive more than $100,000 in government funds need to keep employees free of drugs. (Wood, 2010) However, if marijuana were legalized, the law would prohibit a district from using a positive drug test for marijuana as a discriminating factor in employment. It would also forbid a district from regulating any employee conduct relating to the use of marijuana unless school district could prove job impairment associated with use. Or school district could also choose to maintain a drug-free environment that is consistent with the federal law. This is to say that legalization of marijuana would cost California K-university schools federal funding for being out of compliance with the Federal Drug-Free Workplace Act requirements. (ACSA, 2010) Furthermore, schools would not be able to control and punish teachers or bus drivers that show up at work under the influence of the drug. It would not be safe for the children as well as the environment of education.

In a nutshell, the benefits of marijuana legalization that were presented include the potential tax revenue for the state, reduction in cost of law enforcement, and money would be taken away from drug cartels as well as black market. We demonstrate above the reasons that we believe these benefits eventually become irrelevant when weighing them against the costs of legalization. Legalization would only leave adolescents to be the target of the black market for marijuana. No matter how much revenue could be potentially generated from marijuana legal sales, the cost of having the drug decriminalized in the mind of youth that eventually increases use rate is immeasurable. The proponents of marijuana legalization fail to consider all of the possible harmful impacts that smoking marijuana have on our younger generation. Through both the financial and social standpoint, we’ve come to the conclusion that California should not make marijuana legal for recreational purposes.