Marijuana's Social Effects and Effects on Public Safety

Aside from marijuana’s health concerns, the most feared possible effect is that ‘pot’ legalization will create millions of stoners incapable of daily menial tasks, and then they turn to hard drugs too. And then as they figure it, society collapses. Well, have no fear because I am here to take on these dangerous worries.

First off, one of the most well-known but incorrect theories is that of marijuana being a ‘gateway drug.’ For those who do not know, a gateway drug is one that using cannabis leads to the use of and addiction to hard drugs like heroin and cocaine. There have been multiple studies both finding in favor and opposed to the theory. In 2006, a Swedish institute gave rats doses of THC daily and then allowed them to control their own heroin use through pressing a lever. As the rats used THC day after day, they gradually used more and more heroin. Yet their experiment was erroneous because of errors in the rats’ ages. They tested on rats that were 28 days old (about 6 years old for humans). The test group for adult rats showed no relationship between use of THC and addiction to heroin. Furthermore, a study by the American Psychiatric Association conducted a study which observed the lives of children ages 10-12. Their results were that those kids that tried marijuana before any other drugs were no more likely to abuse hard drugs than those who did not use cannabis before drug use. And to cap this refutation of the gateway drug theory, a study in 1999 by US National Academy of Science's Institute of Medicine reported that marijuana is not a "gateway drug to the extent that it is a cause or even that it is the most significant predictor of serious drug abuse."

Another major panic is that marijuana use will cause many traffic fatalities because of its consumption. Occasionally you will hear on the local news or even the national news stations that a fatal collision was caused by a driver who had marijuana in their system. This is a common fallacy because what people may not notice is that in most of these accidents, the driver was under the influence of alcohol as well. In fact, a recent study supports the idea that fears of marijuana traffic collision are overblown and that in traffic fatalities, a driver who is high is no more a danger for car wreck casualties than one who is drug-free.

And this last part is likely an unknown possible benefit. Public safety could very possibly become greater as a result of marijuana’s decriminalization. From my street knowledge, often times in iffy situations the police are not called when they should be. People are often afraid that the cops will find marijuana and thus arrest them for possession. Consequently, problems are not resolved and people can suffer because of it. Furthermore, an estimated $300 million is spent on fighting marijuana in each state. If marijuana is legalized than all of this budget money can be used elsewhere. Police can eliminate a former focus of their patrols and instead concentrate on more stopping more dangerous criminals and preventing crimes, such as hard drug use and trafficking. In this way, there is a good possibility that marijuana legalization would create better public safety.