I watched intently as a group of upper classmen passed around a marijuana joint at a party. The occurrence would not have attracted so much of my attention, had the happy smokers not include my high school's valedictorian and several members of the National Honor Society. I am now a well informed marijuana activist who has studied the effects of the drugs usage via a numerical standpoint. More importantly though, I have studied the use first hand having lived with/aside it for over five years. I have seen enough through my own eyes to make the informed opinion that the recreational use of marijuana does not constitute as a crime, and should be made legal and available to adults. .
Making a crime out of smoking marijuana does not make sense. The way to decide if an action constitutes as a crime is to check if the action directly, or indirectly violates another persons rights. If we take this simple but true idea, how is a person carrying a baggie of plant material to ingest at home violating anyone else's rights, even indirectly? According to the government this simple act of plant-touching has something inherently wrong with it, and so does the consumption of this plant in the privacy of one's own house. Obviously the law is not there to protect others from someone else's harmful plant-touching activities. It is there to protect me from myself. There are many problems with the government thinking it can protect people from themselves, and their own choices. One is that people do a significant amount of harmful things in their homes each day, not just to themselves, but to their families. Imagine, you are enjoying some big greasy homemade burgers with your family, when all of the sudden the D.E.A. busts down your door, drags off your children and arrests you. "But why is this happening?" You plead to the officers. "Well," he explains, "high cholesterol kills thousands of people each year from related diseases, and you were eating this junk, and your family had access to it as well.