Legalization Marijuana. Your Written Proposal Include Elements

¶ … legalization marijuana. Your written proposal include elements listed address considerations: •An analysis public policy criminal justice interrelate. •Why feel social change relevant criminal justice system important policy initiate foster change improvement.

There has been much controversy regarding the legalization of marijuana in recent years, as its number of supporters has increased directly proportional to the number of individuals opposing it. When considering matters from a perspective involving public policy, the legalization of marijuana is going to cause increased marijuana use. Consuming more marijuana can lead to people's health being negatively affected but it can also generated more revenue for the government as a result of taxes. Even with this, the fact that governments would gain control over marijuana sales would mean that they would be able to control the amounts that people use as a result of introducing more or less harsh taxes. Education would make the difference between a public that opposes legalization on account of what they hear from others and a public that actually wants to oppose legalization.

The legalization of marijuana currently stands as a social issue, with the masses having mixed opinions regarding the topic and with a series of forces continuing to stand in the way of a society where the substance is legal. Recent historic events such as the 1960s and the 1980s have played an important role in shaping public opinion concerning marijuana. Individuals in the 1990s and in the first decade of the 21st century have adopted more conservative attitudes with regard to cannabis.

Even with the fact that legalization has recently seen an increasing amount of support, it is yet to have gathered as much supporters as the opposition. In order for people to gain a more complex understanding of the effects that legalization would have, society as a whole needs to focus on educational strategies. "Whether opinion swings toward more robust support for legalization will depend heavily on the perceived success of the state legalization experiments now under way -- which will hinge in part on the federal response to those experiments." (Galstone & Dionne) The authorities largely have control of the situation and it is safe to say that they are in charge of shaping public opinion. As long as they are hesitant about legalizing the substance they are not going to enable the masses to comprehend why it would be beneficial for the world in general to have access to marijuana through legal means.

Individuals in the contemporary society can gain possession of marijuana without it being legalized. This exposes people to a criminal environment and encourages criminal organizations to get actively involved in producing and trafficking marijuana. The funds they gain from the enterprise often go to sponsoring more serious illegal activities and even terrorism. By keeping marijuana illegal the authorities indirectly encourage criminals to take advantage of the situation and make it problematic for normal people to consume it on account of the types of individuals they have to interact with in order to find it (Ruschmann, 2009, p. 82).

The reality is that education has never addressed marijuana usage from a perspective that would enable individuals to actually understand what happens when consuming the substance.

"Because of its penchant for exaggeration and cartoonish treatment of the issues, most current education about drugs is not taken seriously by young people." (Ruschmann, 2009, p. 82) In contrast to education addressing marijuana usage, other types of education involving substances such as alcohol or tobacco are much more effective and are not simply meant to frighten people.

While law enforcement agencies claim to be interested in providing society with the ability to distinguish between accurate and inaccurate depictions of marijuana, the truth is that they often tend to take on a prejudiced attitude concerning the substance's and this makes people confused. Many people today who are acquainted with actual effects associated with marijuana usage are probable to acknowledge that most of the things they learnt about the substance were misleading. This does not mean that people who consumed marijuana are better prepared to explain its symptoms, as it simply means that the authorities have a tendency to provide a dishonest description of the substance.