Marijuana can benefit us and is safer than alcohol

This is in regards to the reluctance of our government leaders to at least investigate/research the herb marijuana before denouncing it any further, holding onto a stigma. This appears to be the missing step in the debate(s)/ concern(s) of the use of it. Education is powerful; it is knowledge.

I am trying to understand how it has come to pass that with our state being one of the highestrated for drunken driving, our communities are still willing to allow so many bars, so many new fad microbreweries to exist. It is a known fact the damage alcohol has on one’s body and mind as well as the damage it causes to relationships — accidents, domestic violence/abuse, liver and brain damage. Yet society accepts this and promotes alcohol. The effects of alcohol strongly indicate it can have very severe negative consequences. People die from alcohol poisoning. Do we know how many people have died from marijuana use? And to those who fear that marijuana is a “gateway to harder drugs,” could it be that alcohol is the “gateway to cigarettes/ nicotine” or vice versa?

Yet the marijuana plant, which has written history longer than crops such as hops, potatoes, corn, sugar and tobacco, is made out to be the demon of plants. My understanding is that marijuana has been found written about in Chinese text dating back as far as 2737 BC. It was used both for a euphoric experience as well as medicine. It reached Europe around AD 500 or earlier. In the United States, from 1850 to 1942, marijuana was listed in our “United States Pharmacopeia” as a prescription for several ailments.

So, we might need to ask ourselves, then how did this become so stigmatized? How and who took control to instill such fear into our society over this herb? How did marijuana become listed as a Schedule I drug which is in the same category as LSD and heroin? Isn’t it time to take marijuana off the list and perhaps replace it with alcoholic beverages?

Whether for recreation or medicine, it seems preferable to the use of alcohol and perhaps some pharmaceuticals. And as far as I know, alcoholic drinks do not have medicinal properties as does the marijuana plant.

And when it comes to the fear that has been instilled with the use of this plant and its accessibility to our youth, do you not think that the youth aren’t and haven’t experimented with alcohol? That said, the same is likely to be true of marijuana use. The difference being that I do not think marijuana would cause the harm that alcohol can and does. I do not know that marijuana would cause any long-term illnesses that our society would end up paying into for insurance and medical assistance as we do now for alcohol users. Not to mention the court costs.

Instead of microbreweries being the latest and greatest moneymaker, our society could make a switch to some less damaging commodity such as federal and state legalized marijuana in forms of edibles, tinctures, sprays, drinks/teas, vaporizing. Legal marijuana would be one less profit for any cartel business, plus how many lives would this alone save like the mules that die while trying to transport or don’t succeed and are killed by the cartel?

And if we could bring back the growing of hemp plants for its many uses we could help our economy. It was within the law to grow hemp once upon a time. To purchase any hemp or hemp-made product now it has to come from Canada. Just think how it could help our country if we grew hemp and sold our own hemp seeds and products.