One motivation for legalization is the economic benefits that can be derived from the regulated commercial availability of marijuana. Rising Tax Revenues, Job Growth, and Investment Opportunities Are Powerful Incentives to Drive Legalization. Nearly two-thirds of conservative and moderate Democrats (63%) say marijuana should be legal for medical and recreational use. An overwhelming majority of Liberal Democrats (82%) say the same thing.
Prosecuting Recreational Marijuana Users Not Only Decreases State Budgets, But Perpetrators' Career Choices, Legalization Advocates Say. A Possession Arrest Can Be an Obstacle to College Acceptance and Employment. Creating jobs Legalizing and regulating marijuana will bring one of the country's largest cash crops under the rule of law. This will create jobs and economic opportunities in the formal economy rather than in the illicit market.
Opponents of legalizing recreational marijuana say it will increase adolescent use and cause more medical emergencies, including traffic accident deaths from drugged driving About a quarter of those who have tried marijuana (12% of the general public) say they have used marijuana on last year. Proponents of legalizing recreational marijuana say it will add billions to the economy, create hundreds of thousands of jobs, free up scarce police resources and stop huge racial disparities in marijuana law enforcement. Data from the United States Border Patrol show that marijuana seizures have dropped millions of pounds and are at their lowest levels in more than a decade, indicating that legal domestic production is declining demand for marijuana smuggled from Mexico Approximately one of every ten (12%) cite the costs and problems of enforcing marijuana laws or simply say that people should be free to use marijuana (9%). We worked with House Judiciary Speaker Jerry Nadler and then Senator Kamala Harris to draft and introduce the legislation, and we partnered with other national human and civil rights organizations to form the Marijuana Justice Coalition, which has worked to ensure that federal reform on marijuana puts those who have been harmed most by the ban front and center A roughly equal proportion of Democrats aged 30 to 49 (73%) and 50 to 64 (70%) say marijuana should be legalized for medical and recreational use.
They argue that regulating marijuana will reduce street crime, take businesses away from drug cartels, and make marijuana use safer through the required testing, labeling and child-resistant packaging. Among those who think marijuana should be illegal, 59% say there should be a federal application in states that allows marijuana use, while 38% say it shouldn't be. Studies show that medical marijuana dispensaries decreased crime in their neighborhoods due to a greater security presence and more people walking around the area. A separate question that raises whether marijuana use should be legalized, not specified for recreational or medical uses, has shown a strong long-term increase in support for legalization.
Marijuana may not be addictive, but marijuana often serves as an addict's introduction to substance abuse, say critics of its legalization. While most of those who say marijuana should be legal say they have tried it before (65%), 34% of those who support legalization say they have never tried it. Data that has tracked adolescent perception of risk and marijuana use for decades clearly show an inverse relationship; as adolescent risk perception decreases, marijuana use increases. Some of the public health associations that oppose legalizing marijuana for recreational use include the American Medical Association (AMA), the American Society for Addiction Medicine (ASAM), the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and the American Academy of Pediatrics.
.
