“All your life you’re told how terrible it is and you see all those [anti-drug] commercials long before you ever start smoking, and then once you realize that it’s not that bad, you start to think, “Hmm, what else have I been lied to about?”, states a current University of Rhode Island junior.

With the recent legalization of medical marijuana in Michigan and the decriminalization of marijuana possession under an ounce in Massachusetts, social acceptance is at an all-time high.

Though still not legal in the United States, the use of marijuana in the medical sense for health problems including glaucoma, AIDS, neuropathic pain, (treatment of spasticity associated with) multiple sclerosis and chemotherapy-induced nausea, is being thoroughly considered.

The American Medical Association claims that, “Marijuana is not a benign drug. Use impairs learning and judgment, and may lead to the development of mental health problems.”

To be fair, so do the other activities that make up the majority of things people do.

Kids get stressed with things such as studying for a test, applying to college, and just being a teenager. Stress has been known to increase the chances of developing life-threatening conditions. If only there was something that could ease stress, couldn’t kill you, and is less expensive than the wallet-murdering prescriptions people have to tour through before finding something that even kind of works.

Albeit a rather ignored and looked down upon fact, marijuana is intensively involved in the modern high school education. Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John F. Kennedy, and Bill Clinton, among others all admitted to having smoked marijuana, as well as the current President-elect, Barack Obama. These men grace the U.S. History books used here at SKHS, as well as been involved in numerous class discussions.

The “drug” has had a tremendous inclusion in our reading curriculum, as the likes of William Shakespeare, Kurt Vonnegut, and Jack Kerouac, all frequent names in our required reading at SKHS, indulged in marijuana. Art and music, two well-enjoyed subjects here at SKHS, have been persistently created by the use of marijuana.

Artists Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dali, important characters in not just the art community but in the Humanities class taught here were heavily into weed, while the current music world just may owe its existence to the “drug”. Music legends The Beatles and Bob Dylan are among countless others in the industry who openly smoked marijuana and consider it as an influence in their writing.

Think about it, how often do you see the faces of the Fab Four or Dylan around SKHS? They’re on posters, in textbooks, and on t-shirts. I guess the thinking goes, you can love and admire pot-smokers just don’t you dare be one!

In 2007, 52-percent of high-school seniors in Rhode Island claimed to have smoked marijuana at some point in their lives. Nearly 69 million Americans over the age of twelve have tried marijuana at least once. That’s 23-percent of all Americans, excluding those who began smoking before the age of twelve.

There is a group of police officers based out of Massachusetts known as LEAP (Law Enforcement Against Prohibition) whose mission statement reads, “Reduce the multitude of unintended harmful consequences resulting from fighting the war on drugs and to lessen the incidence of death, disease, crime, and addiction by ultimately ending drug prohibition.”

With this month being the 75^th anniversary of when America’s leaders decided to end prohibition on alcohol, LEAP has created WeCanDoItAgain.com. The site allows visitors to contact their state representatives to ask them to repeal what they refer to as a “failed prohibition of drugs”.

According to the group’s site a total of roughly $48 billion was spent on the “War on Drugs” in 2008 alone throughout the United States. Our nation’s government claims to have spent about $40 billion on pre-primary thru secondary education and $41 billion housing the homeless this year.

In 2006, the University of Pittsburgh completed a 12-year study proving that marijuana is not a gateway drug. They studied 214 boys starting at ages 10-12 until they reached the age of 22. Though not all of them used marijuana, about a quarter of the ones that did exhibit the reverse pattern of using marijuana prior to alcohol or tobacco. The study states that, “They were no more likely to develop a substance use disorder than those who followed the traditional succession of alcohol and tobacco before illegal drugs.”

Ralph E. Tarter, lead author of the study, stated, “The gateway progression may be the most common pattern, but it’s certainly not the only order of drug use. In fact, the reverse pattern is just as accurate for predicting who might be at risk for developing a drug dependence disorder.”

Putting someone in the prison system for use of drugs is absurd. Yes, get them rehabilitated, get them help, but don’t push them further down the hole. Why do most people get into hardcore drugs? They’re in a dark place and experiencing a lot of emotional and mental pain. What is a prison cell? A dark place where people experience a lot of emotional and mental pain!

However, marijuana doesn’t even reach this level. According to the government of the United States of America’s White House Drug Policy, “Marijuana is not addictive”. The same report goes on to “fight” the use of drugs, saying there are, “Currently, 62 percent of teens in drug treatment are dependent on marijuana”. So they’re using a replacement for drugs that can actually kill them by using something that calms them down and can’t kill them? That’s just ludicrous!

Jimmy Carter, the 39^th President of the United States, once openly stated his feelings of the legal consequences on drug use saying, “Penalties against possession of a drug should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself, and where they are, they should be changed.”

Regardless of being charged with possession, cultivation, or sale of marijuana, in Rhode Island, if the amount in question is between one to five kilograms the person being accused faces a mandatory minimal sentence of ten years in incarceration as well as a possible fine of $10,000 to $500,000. How could that possibly damage anyone?

The current term for raping a child under the age of 13 and causing physical harm is ten years to life or life without parole. Though most circumstances pertain to the lengthier terms, the fact that someone could receive as much time in the prison system for a marijuana-related arrest as they could for such a horrible thing as raping a child is not okay.

In the words of DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) Judge Francis Young, “Marijuana is one of the safest, therapeutically active substances known to man.” So then, what are we so afraid of?