Marijuana use is increasing in teens from last year while prescription drug use is going down. Needless to say, the prohibition attempt  on marijuana is not really working all that well, but it is having a positive effect on the use of other, more harmful drugs. Though this was not an intended effect of the prohibition, few argue that it is not a positive effect that the movement has had. If more teens can stick to marijuana in stead of drugs that do more harm to the body, that is a win that we can all enjoy. While marijuana usage has increased with this, cigarette smoking has decreased nineteen percent this year which most people agree are more harmful than marijuana. A lot of arrests occur over nothing more than a small amount of marijuana and this is something that most would like to change.

The Real State of Marijuana

Jag Davies from the Drug Policy Alliance has a lot of great things to say about marijuana which gets a bad rap from most uneducated people. He says that these recent results are unsurprising and they show that most kids are smarter than we think. With the use of other drugs going down and the use of marijuana on the rise, we can see that teens know what can really harm them and what is the harmless plant. About 750,000 people are arrested for small amounts of marijuana each year and these are just such unimportant arrests. Our country could be saving money by not performing these arrests and putting that money in to more important areas.

Teens constantly say that marijuana is much easier to obtain than alcohol, so why not regulate it the same way? With age restrictions on it, most problems people have with the plant will solved and our country can move on. It is time that we figure out what works for this century and quit living in the last one. If the regulation of marijuana is the right way to go, then that is by all means the path that we should take. We want to end drug abuse and addiction, so if teens are smoking weed with their friends, this should be the least of our worries. Let kids have fun as long as they are not killing themselves with harmful drugs.

Drug Policies in the 21st Century

Rather than looking at the overall usage of drugs, we should aim to stop harm caused from drugs. Problems like overdose, disease transmission, and addiction are the real things we need to be dealing with. There are many other problems with the war on drugs in that it wastes tax dollars and man hours that we could be using on more important things. Lots of discrimination takes place in drug related arrests as well so a new policy would only help to remedy that situation. If we want to end all of these problems, then a new drug policy is the first step in the right direction.