This document discusses arguments for and against legalizing marijuana in the United States. It summarizes that prohibiting marijuana has resulted in economic issues like billions being spent enforcing laws with little effect. It has also led to organized crime and drug cartels. Legalizing marijuana could generate tax revenue, reduce enforcement costs, and create legal jobs. The document also compares marijuana prohibition to alcohol prohibition in the 1920s, noting they both spurred organized crime. It concludes that with marijuana's prevalence and minimal health effects, legalization would benefit the economy and security of the U.S.

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Reynaldo López
Mrs. Ann Frake
ENG 112-007
5 December, 2013
To Legalize or Not to Legalize Marijuana
In recent years, the question of marijuana legalization has been debated throughout the
United States. Some of the states have already answered the question but most remain without
facing the issue. While the rest of the country leaves their laws as they are and continue to
prohibit the production, distribution and consumption of marijuana, people like Rodrigo, a 26
year old Mexican, smuggle drugs into the country every day and distribute them throughout the
country for its popular consumption (Phippen 1). Not only do they break the law this way, but
with their presence, these smugglers also bring the violence that characterizes the ongoing cartel
wars in their home country into United States territory (U.S. Drug 1). If these consequences of
prohibiting marijuana are the only ones that come to mind, a huge piece of the problem is
slipping by. The economic prosperity of the drug industry is more than considerable. While the
United States is in an extremely precarious economic situation, with a national deficit growing
by the trillions of dollars each year, the soothing effect of the potential tax revenue generated by
marijuana sales and imports is definitely not one to be ignored (U.S. National). Another
component of this economic problem is the amount of money and time that the government
spends on trying to shut down all of these illegal drug operations. The view on those expenses
would be fairly positive if a large amount of progress was made, but all of the efforts made prove
to be futile more often than not. Those efforts are, in essence, a waste of money that simply add
to the country's deficit without providing anything positive in return.

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Another thing that most people tend to overlook is the scope of the industry and the
amount of jobs it could provide. The United States is the destination for a great percentage of the
drugs produced worldwide (U.S. Drug). The common stereotype is that almost all of the
marijuana consumed in the United States comes from Mexico or is homegrown, but imports
come from all around the globe, including Canada, a long overlooked producer (U.S. Drug).
These are only a few problems that could be solved by legalizing marijuana. Through looking at
past scenarios where prohibition was in place and looking further into details and statistics of the
drug industry and marijuana in particular, these and other specific problems caused by the
prohibition of marijuana will be highlighted. The result of making it legal and if it would really
be worth doing will also be highlighted. This look will not only be at the national level but also
at a more relevant level, the local state level. Regardless of what the specific problems regarding
illegal marijuana are, the main reason why they are problems is because of the fact that
marijuana is illegal. The legalization of marijuana, along with government regulation, could
solve many of these problems.
First, let’s explore the marijuana related problems in the United States today starting with
the economic issues. The country today has a national debt in excess of $17.2 trillion (U.S.
National). While some may argue that marijuana has nothing to do with this, there is proof that a
lot of the money being spent each year by the national government goes toward grants that are
meant to stop or lower the use of drugs like marijuana. Not only is this money spent excessively
through programs like Drug Abuse Resistance Education or D.A.R.E. but the results are far from
satisfactory. In the words of Trish Regan, a multi-Emmy Award nominated journalist,
“According to an August 1999 article in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology,
twenty-year-olds who had received D.A.R.E. classes a decade earlier were no less likely to have

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smoked pot or cigarettes…Usage rates, it is concluded, went up.” (qtd in 108). The table below
shows the distribution of the roughly $552 million in drug-related grant monies from the U.S.
government to the state of Ohio alone in 2012 (Office of National).

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If all 50 states were to get roughly the same amount of money in drug-related grants, a total of
more than $27.6 billion a year possibly being wasted.
However, this isn’t the only money that the national government spends with few positive
results. High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas or HIDTA is a federal program that pays teams of
government officers who target areas with high levels of drug trafficking (Leinwand). If the
Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology isn’t convincing enough about the inefficiency of
programs like D.A.R.E. that get funded through federal grants to states, statements from the
government itself in the past about HIDTA are as convincing as it gets. According to Donna
Leinwand, a journalist for USA Today, “It [HIDTA] is also a program that the Bush
administration says has become bloated and too far removed from its original mission.”
Leinwand also quotes David Muhlhausen, a senior policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation, a
conservative think tank in Washington, saying “These programs have become bloated… There’s
very little evidence that they are working.” In Appendix A, on page 5, is a graphic representation
of the HIDTA designated counties in Ohio according to the United States Department of Justice.
Furthermore, in Ohio, the State Highway Patrol has had to resort to using dogs to sniff
out drugs and try to boost the number of drug busts. These dogs don’t come cheap. They are
Dutch shepherds or Belgian Malinois imported from the Netherlands for around $14,000 each
(Patrol).

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It is clear that a vehicle being used to smuggle marijuana would have
to be stopped by a highway patrol officer first in order for the dogs to be of any use. So, the dogs
are really just another failed attempt to eradicate the smuggling of these drugs. Not only that, but
they represent yet another expense that produces minimal results.

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These have all been ways that the marijuana industry hurts the economy just by being
illegal, but there are ways that marijuana could help boost the national economy if it were made
legal. According to Trish Regan, Bruce Perlowin, the American Kingpin of Pot has made
millions and millions of dollars from the marijuana business that he has had to launder because
of the illegality of marijuana (118). The economic relevance of this in relation to the national
economy stems from the fact that those millions came out of Americans’ pockets and when he
laundered his millions of dollars, Perlowin did so in places like the Cayman Islands, Belize, and
Colombia, among others in Latin America (118). In other words the Kingpin of Pot took a chunk
of the U.S. economy and spread it throughout Latin America. Imagine the good that those
hundreds of millions of dollars could have done for the American economy had Perlowin been
able to re-invest them domestically, not to mention the tax revenue that would have come from
them.
All in all, the economic circumstances surrounding the U.S. and the marijuana industry
desperately call for the legalization of the drug. The government will save the money being
wasted on trying to stop the industry. Profits from the sales of marijuana will be reinvested in the
United States, and jobs in the industry will be created. Granted, the legalization of marijuana
won’t solve all of the country’s economic problems, but it will definitely ease the load
considerably.
Second, a look at prohibition in the United States’ past, specifically the prohibition of
alcohol and how it relates to the present-day prohibition of marijuana will help to draw
conclusions on the issue at hand. According to Wayne Hall, “national alcohol
prohibition…between 1920 and 1933 was a quixotic and failed social experiment…it created a
large black market for alcohol that was supplied by criminals, contributing to the development of

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organized crime” (1164). Not surprisingly, one can see the first similarity between the
prohibition of alcohol and marijuana: the rise of organized crime. With prohibition comes risk,
with risk come higher prices, and with higher prices come ambitious people who try to take
advantage in order to get rich. The prohibition of alcohol produced the mobs and mafia of the
1920s that included gangsters like Al Capone and Charles “Lucky” Luciano (Mappen 224). In
contemporary times, the prohibition of marijuana has created the countless cartels of Mexico and
South America with criminal masterminds like Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria, Joaquín
Archivaldo Guzmán Loera, and Ismael Zambada García at the head along with Americans like
Bruce Perlowin also cashing in on the trade.
The second similarity between the two eras begins with the general consensus that “the
decline in alcohol use came at an unacceptable social and economic cost: namely, increased
crime and corruption, disrespect for the law and forgone tax revenue” (Hall 1171). Today the
prohibition of marijuana has created all of these. The prohibition of marijuana is visibly making
the same strides as the prohibition of alcohol almost a century earlier. The only difference is that
the prohibition of alcohol lasted about 13 years while the prohibition of marijuana has been
tolerated for more than 40 years.
Even with all of these facts and statistics, some people still believe that the prohibition of
marijuana is the best option and that it should not be legalized. One argument that they pose is
that marijuana is addictive. According to Jonathan Caulkins, et al, marijuana can cause abuse or
dependence but only to a small minority (24). Another argument against legalization is that
marijuana can be fatal. Robert Gable’s research however, shows that the possible lethal dose of
marijuana is somewhere around 1,000 times the average recreational dose (qtd. in Caulkins 63).
A third argument that opposers to legalization have is that marijuana use has no positive effects

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on the user. Some believe that it only impairs the individual or intoxicates them, but the World
Anti-Doping Agency argues that, “marijuana is properly included in the list of drugs banned
from competitive sports because using it might give some athletes an improper advantage on the
playing field” citing potential benefits like improved concentration and reduced anxiety, fear and
tension (qtd. in Caulkins 90). In conclusion, the country's current economic situation calls for
drastic improvement and the enforcement of anti-marijuana laws is only creating the exact
opposite. There is also evidence that prohibition in the past has been an utter failure and that
marijuana only causes minor dependence. To cap it all off, marijuana has been proven to be far
from lethal and research has shown that it can actually improve a person's performance in
competition and in their everyday life.
Just like marijuana has caused some of the federal government's debt through the
enforcement of prohibition, it can provide at least some relief to the national economy through
foregone enforcement expenses and the intake of new tax revenues. On top of that, with the
amount of users in the country at the moment who consume marijuana regardless of prohibition,
it might as well be legal. These people are proof that marijuana is not lethal and also that it is not
as harmful as many make it out to be. America has waited too long and dug itself into a hole too
deep because of stubborn efforts to keep the prohibition of marijuana in place. The facts are out
there, and although a perfect, utopian society is hard, if not impossible to attain, the legalization
of marijuana can make the United States a better place. Taxpayers could save billions, drug
related violence could be drastically diminished and law enforcement officers could focus their
full attention on murderers, terrorists, rapists, etc. The advantages of the legalization of
marijuana are quite numerous. It is just a matter of wanting to take advantage of them. In simpler
words, legalization is definitely something worth doing.

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Works Cited
Caulkins, Jonathan P., et al. Marijuana Legalization, What Everyone Needs To Know. New
York: Oxford University Press, 2012. Print.
Hall, Wayne. "What Are The Policy Lessons Of National Alcohol Prohibition In The United
States." Addiction (2009): 1164-1173. Web.
Leinwand, Donna. "'High-Intensity' Drug Areas Multiplying." USA Today 9 June 2005: 3a. Web.
Mappen, Marc. Prohibition Gangsters, The Rise And Fall Of A Bad Generation. New
Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2013. Print.
Office Of National Drug Control Policy. "Ohio Drug Control Update." Electronic. U.S.
Government , 2012. Web. 12 November 2013.
"Patrol Dogs Help Curb Drug Smuggling In Ohio." The Columbus Dispatch 10 November 2013:
1. Web.
Phippen, Weston. "Inside an Arizona Drug Smuggling Gang." The Phoenix New Times 7 March
2013: 1-11. Web.
Regan, Trish. Joint Ventures, Inside America's Almost Legal Marijuana Industry. Hoboken: John
Wiley And Sons, Inc., 2011. Print.
U.S. Department of Justice, National Drug Intelligence Center.
www.justice.gov/archive/ndic/pubs38/38661/movement.htm. February 2010. 7 October
2013.

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U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency. "Drug Trafficking In The United States." May 2004. Almanac
Of Policy Issues. Web. 12 November 2013.
U.S. National Debt Clock. 30 November 2013. Web. 30 November 2013.