By Andres Gonzalez

Online Editor

As recently as the 1970s, a person charged with a second possession of cannabis offense could be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, the same sentence handed out to brutal murderers. Compare that outdated statistic with this one from the United Nations’ World Drug Report for 2011: cannabis is the world’s most abused illicit drug.

Almost 203 million people between the ages of 15 and 64 smoked cannabis at least once in the last year. The percent  of THC, the major psychoactive chemical in cannabis, seized by authorities has risen in the last 10 to 15 years, and the seizure rates of cannabis in North America and Mexico have risen, but that has not even put a dent in the amount of cannabis in North American markets.

Legalizing cannabis could, however, cut down on drug use in this country.
While markets in the Americas have become inflated with cannabis, European countries where cannabis has been legalized have seen cannabis use fall to its lowest figures in the last decade. The percentage of cannabis users in the western and central parts of Europe is 7.1 percent compared to 10.7 percent in the United States.

In the early 2000s, Portugal had some of the highest rates of HIV infection and drug overdose deaths. In 2001, Portuguese officials adopted a new set of drug laws that regulated the dealers and concentrated on treating the users. Under Portuguese law, any person found with an amount exceeding that necessary for 10 days’ use of heroin, cannabis, cocaine or LSD is referred to a panel of three experts. A lawyer or judge, a health care or social worker and an extra one of the two make up the panel, which then sets a small fine, recommends treatment or waives the offense.

In the five years after the law was adopted, drug overdoses dropped 27.5 percent and new HIV cases dropped 50 percent. From 2008 to 2009, cannabis seizure rates dropped 37.7 percent. Instead of becoming a hive of drug addicts and property-value-destroying homeless crackheads, the city of Lisbon prospered.

Of course, to legalize such an array of drugs in America would not be wise, as Americans’ relationship with anything seems to err on the “the more, the merrier” side rather than the “moderation is key” side. Alcohol can ruin livers, has a high risk of dependency and generally wreaks havoc on the physiological systems of the body. Tobacco and tobacco products have an extremely high risk of dependency, ravage the lungs and contain molecules also found in rocket fuel, gasoline and lead paint.

Chronic marijuana usage, on the other hand, has fewer long-term use consequences than alcohol and tobacco, both legal drugs. Cannabis can be ingested in the form of cookies, cakes and even lollipops, which bypasses the risk to the respiratory system, has an extremely low risk of chemical dependence, and has been shown to have many medical applications.

Cannabis has been shown to be an effective medicine with applications in treating nausea and eye disorders such as glaucoma. Its derivatives have a painkilling capacity more than 1,000 times that of morphine.

It has such promise as a medicine that the National Institute on Drug Abuse has been cultivating a stash to end all stashes at the University of Mississippi. Cultivation began on the mega-stash in 1968, when the NIDA was granted a monopoly on the cultivation of marijuana for research. The NIDA actively uses its monopoly to block in-depth research of the plant and only provides low-grade cannabis for researchers.

“Based on the photographic evidence, NIDA’s concoction of seeds, stems and leaves more closely resembles dried cat brier than cannabis,” according to Fast Company magazine, which prides itself on its progressive looks into the business world. By only providing low-grade marijuana for testing, the NIDA insures that all research done is skewed in a negative direction.

But not all government authorities are opposed to legalization or decriminalization. President Barack Obama has adopted a very politically savvy position as a neutral party, and former Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders made her support of the legalization of marijuana very public in 2010 when California residents were preparing to vote on the topic.

“I think we consume far more dangerous drugs that are legal: Cigarette smoking, nicotine and alcohol, I feel they cause much more devastating effects physically,” Elders said. “We need to lift the prohibition on marijuana.”

In 2009, the U.S. made more than $8 billion from the federal cigarette tax, according to TurboTax. In 2010, there were an estimated 46 million cigarette smokers in the U.S. and 38 million marijuana smokers.

If marijuana was taxed at the same amount as cigarettes, the U.S government could have raked in about $5 billion. This also ignores the millions of dollars the federal government spends on the war on drugs.

The staggering economic numbers, complemented by the medicinal properties of cannabis, the relatively low harm it does to recreational users and the general trends of declining crime rate in European cities after legalization can lead to only one conclusion:

Legalize it, tax it, oversee its distribution and – listen up, Congress – enjoy the profits.