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The legalization of Marijuana is a highly heated and controversial issue in America today. Data shows that over 55% of Americans believe marijuana should continue to be illegal and the remaining 45% believe the pot‘s legal status should be altered. But why? Prohibitionist policies based on eradication, interdiction and criminalization of consumption of the drug simply haven’t worked. It has simply just places a burden on tax payer’s money and has been a wasteful usage of police enforcement. The prohibition of weed is also a direct infringement of our personal liberties, President Abraham Lincoln once stated that, “…Prohibition goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man’s appetite by legislation and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes…” Marijuana prohibition laws strikes a fatal blow at the very ideologies and principles of freedom upon which our republic was founded and to the very civil liberties which government was set up to defend. So why is the basic liberty of deliberately using cannabis to alter one’s state of mind illegal in our nation? Because of the misconceptions of the drug and plain old ignorance.

3 Main reasons Pot hasn’t been legalized yet
1. It is perceived as addictive and dangerous
The perception is that people get try marijuana and then they get hooked and become "potheads," and they suffer physical and mental injuries or even death and marijuana begins to dominate their lives. Both of these assumptions are false most people who smoke marijuana smoke it only occasionally. A small minority of Americans, less than 1 percent, smoke marijuana on a daily basis. An even smaller minority develop a dependence on marijuana. Some people who smoke marijuana heavily and frequently stop without difficulty! Furthermore, there is no convincing scientific evidence that marijuana causes psychological damage, mental illness or death in either teenagers or adults. In fact, in marijuana’s long history there has NEVER...
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