How a Bill Becomes a Law

¶ … law that is to be submitted to state legislator relevant to the author. Items that will be addressed as part of this proposal will include an identification of the problem or concern, a stating of the proposal or idea, background on stories and evidence that support the legislation, whether similar legislation has been introduced or passed, the finances and stakeholders involved and so forth. Problem Identification Marijuana is criminalized despite its noted and proven ability to reduce pain and alleviate symptoms.

Further, people in possession of fairly small amounts of marijuana are being put in jail or even prison. This makes sense for harder and nastier drugs like heroin and cocaine but not marijuana. The proposed law is two-fold. First, there should be general decriminalization of minor possession of marijuana. Unless a person is in care and custody of a child and/or is driving, minor possession should not be a criminal citation of any sort. Second, medical marijuana should be legalized as well.

Marijuana can only be grown and sold for medical purposes by legitimate and licenses dispensaries. Those business can only be selling to people with valid prescriptions. This proposal will allow recreational users (not covered by this law) to not get criminal citations despite possession of marijuana. However, people should not be going to jail for such a minor and usually harmless offense anyway. This proposal does NOT advocate legalization of marijuana for recreational use.

The author of this proposal does not personally see the need for pot to be illegal but this is about nursing -- not a social cause. Legal substances under medical marijuana could also include cannabis oil and other marijuana/hemp-based products. Relevant Data As far as cannabis oil goes, there have been some indications that it can treat cancer. However, the law and money have stood in the way of it being used, produced and distributed to those that it might help. A test case for this was Michelle Aldrich.

She had what she thought was the flu but she was eventually diagnosed with state III lung cancer. She is now in remission due in part, she says, to the use of cannabis oil (Roberts, 2013). As for more common knowledge, marijuana use in general has been known to relieve pain and other symptoms for those with cancer and other diseases (Cancer.org, 2015). Similar Legislation Marijuana, either medical or recreational, is legal in 23 states and the District of Columbia. The "recreational" states are Colorado and the state of Washington (Procon, 2015).

Financial Impact If marijuana and other related cannabis products are produced and sold legally, this will create tax revenues for the state that are not currently happening at all. Of course, all current marijuana sales are illegal and thus are not being taxed or regulated at all. Supporting Stakeholders Groups that would support this bill would be pro-marijuana groups, many (but certainly not all or perhaps even most) of people and ethicists in the medical community and so forth.

Non-Supportive Stakeholders Anyone that views marijuana as "evil" or "destructive" would oppose this bill. Generally, right-wing people would not support it while most left-leaning people would (but that's not always true). Anti-drug people in general would take a firm stance against this proposal. Conclusion As can be seen throughout this report, there are lot of people and groups that will not support marijuana being legalized. However, it has.