Buon Giorno, Signore, Signora . I’d love to discuss this topic since it is full with controversies, discussable pros and cons, and soon after I watched one of the phenomenal tv series starring Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul, lol .



Marijuana?
Marijuana is a dosage form of cannabis plant that is mainly used for psychoactive drug and medicine. In Indonesia, the use of marijuana or more often being termed as ‘ganja’ is strongly prohibited and is classified as a first class drug. In Britain, its previous statute is more lenient to marijuana where it was classified as the B-Class drug (from the range of A-E where A is the most dangerous and D is the least dangerous).

The current condition is; marijuana has found its path to escape from prohibition and the law’s infringement in this 2014. Several countries, such as US, Britain, Uruguay, Venezuela, and Portugal, have stated an official underpinning statement from its government about the decision to legalize the use of Marijuana or at least decriminalizing it.

This issue has been escalated since 2012 and has been in a quite intense deliberation by the opponent and the proponent of the issue before resulting in the legalization of the licit marijuana
Several contentions have successfully been strengthening the proponent in legalizing the use of marijuana from three different perspectives, which are:

HEALTH
Marijuana produces less negative effects and less risks to human body when it is consumed comparing with other similar stuffs such as tobacco and alcohol. Also, there are various tests about marijuana which practically fails to prove that marijuana may cause temporary-permanent impairments. .Another study has also been performed. The result is that the addictive level of marijuana is lesser than the addictive level of cigarettes (tobacco) where cigarettes has an addictive level of 20-30% for its consumers where, marijuana is much less addictive, coming in at 9% to 10%.

Surmising from that data, we could conclude that marijuana is not causing a high dependency for its users which highly differ with other type of drugs (cocaine, etc). Beside its less negative effects on human body, marijuana does produce some positive effects to our human body, such as giving cancer patients a renewed appetite, curing insomnia, reducing anxiety, and relieving chronic pain which are according to some scientific studies. Therefore, in my contention, the positive impacts (slightly) outweigh the negative impacts by observing only from the health perspective.

Fyi, marijuana medical studies are still being performed until now where the current status is: specialists haven’t been able to find medically proved effects which are caused by marijuana ergo this perspective remains vague, vary, and full with uncertainties.

LAW
First point: Thousands or even hundred thousands of people have been incarcerated in US and other countries with the accusations of possessing and consuming marijuana where according to all of my arguments in this thread prove that they aren’t worth to be caught in the first place. The effect of being imprisoned for most people is permanent because when certain people are incarcerated due to the marijuana’ issues (in US or example) will be causing them to have permanent criminal record. In some countries, when certain people possess a permanent criminal record, it would prohibit him/her in applying for employment, housing, schooling, and any other privileges.

Legalizing marijuana might have a chance to deflate the number of people getting caught due to marijuana’s issues and stop the act of infringing people’s human rights.

Second point: By legalizing a licit form of marijuana, it means that we decisively close the gate of the illegal/black market which has become the center of money producers for many criminals and cartels that concentrating mostly in South America and North America region. The income derived from those illegal trading have kept them striving in their underground illegal activities.

Third Point: Legalizing marijuana in the form of law will also bring impacts to the economical aspect (mainly will be described in my last perspective). The previous statute which prohibited the distribution and the use of marijuana were causing the demand of marijuana’s products to be held in its current state/number because it was casting fear to whoever who is willing to purchase it ergo there is no significant rise of marijuana’s demand. Legalizing marijuana will escalate the current demand’s number into a higher number since there are no prohibitions whatsoever. I know it seems to be a very horrifying scenario but it will all be explained in the last perspective of my argument which is from economy’s perspective.

ECONOMY
First point: Marijuana is a promising and lucrative business. In the previous years this business has yielded a huge number of gross revenue for the criminals and cartels that involved themselves in marijuana’s trading activities in the black/illegal market. The number was approximately hit the nominal of billions of dollar. Legalizing this business where the highest authority of the production, transportation, distribution, and other elements in this business will be authorized by the government, will yield in an increasing number of income/revenue and will attract many investors to invest in this newly emerged money-producing sector.

Second point: With the government in charge in this business which is including the determination of the tax’s value and the right to decrease or increase the value of the tax, it means that the availability of marijuana in the market in its production level is possible to be regulated and controlled by the government. It is also be able to perform the restriction of the maximum amount of marijuana that can be bought (already been applied in Colorado) and a strict restriction to the youths. Those scenarios would hopefully deter the exorbitant issue that is currently rising which is about the exponentially rising number of marijuana consumers, which of course will happen, but it will be put in control by regulating the value of the tax.

Third Point: The other consideration is: Government has spent too much on the expensive battle with drugs: The costs are including:
-) costs for catching the seller and the buyer
-)costs for prosecuting them in court
-)costs for their incarceration

I do realize that for some of u the legalization of marijuana must be an unwanted and horrifying scenario to be happened but the current condition have shown us that it’s now there, widely spread around the big countries without being deterred by laws. I do also realize that it will soon trigger many unprecedented impacts because the statutes in legalizing marijuana are still newly born. Now let us take this issue to our country, Indonesia. Will it be possible if our country take the similar path with what the other countries have taken which is to legalize the use of marijuana? By scrutinizing this issue from many perspectives, will the advantages outweigh the disadvantages?

Now it is ur turn to weigh in into this, presumably, discussable topic. Will u become the proponent of the issue or vice versa? The answer is clearly up to u and it’s free to state ur arguments in many different perspectives and make sure to elaborate ur arguments with understandable analyses and facts in which hopefully could answer this thread's question: Am I High?.