Is Reefer Madness a Fallacy?

Personal Thoughts
Marijuana was legalized in Colorado when I was 12 years old. Because of this, I feel like
I have very different ideologies around it than other kids my age in other places around the
country. This may be a good thing but it also may not be so good. I feel like its made me blind
to some of the downsides to smoking marijuana underage as well as for recreational and
medicinal use. This leads me to wonder if my ideas concerning it would be different if my living
circumstances were v different.
Living in a state where recreational marijuana is legal has made me ignore some of the
cons but it has also allowed me to learn a lot more about the fallacies and myths that are made
up to scare people away from the drug. Ive heard marijuana is addictive, leads to harder drugs,
and is harmful to your brain. A lot of these are all just misconceptions about the drug that people
have made up in the past to make everyone believe that cannabis is just as bad as any other
hard drug. Marijuana is only rarely addictive and depends mostly on your personality and if you
have records of addiction in your family. There are instances of teens getting into smoking pot
and then dabbling with harder drugs but I think if the nation works on educating youth on these
drugs and how they can affect you in the short term and long term, these instances would be
more rare as well. It has been proven to affect learning and memory when used frequently by
teens that are underage and have developing brains, although these side effects are much less
severe with adult brains that are already developed.
I am in support of medical marijuana because I think it has a lot more benefits than it
does drawbacks. I also think if a medical professional believes that marijuana is the best form of
treatment for you, they should have the final say in the matter because they know better than
anyone else. Studies show that THC and other cannabinoids can reduce nausea after
chemotherapy and can help treat neuropathic pain. Some studies even show that THC can slow
growth in certain types of cancer. It can also help patients with anxiety, sleep, and having an
appetite while undergoing chemotherapy so as not to lose an unhealthy amount of weight.
Ive heard a lot of people say that if medical marijuana (let alone recreational) is
legalized in every state, it will allow kids and teens to have an easier time getting access to it.
As I said before Ive lived my whole teen life in a place where recreational marijuana is legal and
Ive definitely experienced how easy it can be to get your hands on weed as a minor. Even if it
was strictly for medical use only, I dont think that would stop kids from getting it at all. After all
are hard drugs completely off the streets just because they are illegal? This problem will always
be around we just have to educate the youth with the actual facts and not scare tactics so they
can at least be safe if they are still going to do it.
The whole reason that cannabis is criminalized in the first place is just ridiculous in my
opinion. The government outlawed it after the alcohol prohibition had ended and the department
of prohibition had nothing to do. They sent out all sorts of propaganda out to the country and
told people if they smoked the devils lettuce they would be consumed by an irrational rage
and then eventually go insane. Around that time there was a boy who killed his entire family with

an axe in the US. The department of prohibition jumped on this opportunity and broadcast it to
the world saying that this is what happens when you dabble with marijuana. They even asked
30 doctors around the country for their opinions on whether or not cannabis was a drug that
should be outlawed. 29 of those doctors said no and the department grabbed the one who said
yes and displayed their opinion to the world. This is a big reason that contributes to why I think
marijuana should be legalized at least for medicinal use. There are so many people in this
country that still believe these lies that were presented to America so long ago even though the
drug is less dangerous than alcohol which is legal in every single state for everyone over 21
years old.

Pro-Marijuana Decriminalization
Medical marijuana was fallaciously demonized and outlawed in the past for the wrong
reasons. Something as beneficial to people with health issues as marijuana should not be
criminalized based on uncorroborated information. Imagine a person close to you with health
trouble getting arrested for using medical marijuana because it was illegal even though it was
also the one drug that made them feel healthy. Medical marijuana should be decriminalized
because it has a lot more health benefits than drawbacks.
Marijuana helps countless cancer patients with the side effects of chemotherapy among
other things they suffer with. THC and other cannabinoids have been proven to help cancer
patients with nausea, sleep, appetite, and anxiety. Cannabis has even been shown to slow
some types of cancer. Mike Weinholtz, the governor of Utahs wife was diagnosed with cancer
and caught with illegal marijuana in October 2016 that she used instead of powerful painkillers.
Pot reduced Donna Weinholtz's pain so she could do things like ride bikes with her son and
plant tulip bulbs, the couple said What would you do if the person you love most in the world
was faced with that decision?" he said. Would you report them to the police? Would you insist
they stop and live with pain too severe to sleep at night?" (The Associated Press, NBC). Putting
someone under arrest just because they chose to do a drug that best helps their condition is
unfair and unjust. As long as they dont smoke it in public areas, patients who qualify for medical
marijuana should be able to have access to it to help them recover and not have to worry about
getting in trouble because it is illegal.
Contrary to popular belief (especially in the early 1900s), marijuana does not make you
go insane and kill your family with an axe, lead to harder drugs, make you more likely to have a
heart attack, and its not addictive. Many people think marijuana is a gateway drug that will lead
you to trying meth, heroin, or some other hard drug. The Institute of Medicine stated In the
sense that marijuana use typically precedes rather than follows initiation into the use of other
illicit drugs, it is indeed a gateway drug. However, it does not appear to be a gateway drug to
the extent that it is the cause or even that it is the most significant predictor of serious drug
abuse; that is, care must be taken not to attribute cause to association (Institute of Medicine). A

lot of people seem to think along these lines and hold a lot of the propaganda around cannabis
to heart. This is most likely because the government ran a scare campaign through the
department of prohibition just after the prohibition on alcohol ended. They told Americans that
marijuana was a plant with roots in hell and it had many scary and dangerous sounding side
effects. Although a lot of people still believe this, the majority of Americans actually want
marijuana decriminalized. 57% of people that took a survey through Pew Research Center
answered yes to legalization and 60% said yes in a survey conducted by Gallup. Harry Smith, a
reporter from MSNBC stated People in this country want to see marijuana legalized (Harry
Smith, MSNBC). Smith later goes on to talk about the difficulty of getting your hands on illegal
pot and said its really not hard at all.
One popular reason in favor of keeping marijuana outlawed is if it were to get
decriminalized, kids and teens would potentially have an easier time getting their hands on it.
This is true but only slightly. Teens that do smoke marijuana already have an extremely easy
time acquiring it even in states where its illegal. Over one-third of teens said said they could buy
marijuana in just a few hours in a survey conducted by the National Center on Addiction and
Substance Abuse. However, in the survey 75% of students said they have never smoked
marijuana (Vries). This will always be a problem whether marijuana is totally decriminalized or
illegal everywhere. Fiona Macdonald disclosed in her article about marijuana usage in teens A
new survey of more than 216,000 teens across the country has shown that since marijuana has
become widely legalized, the number of adolescents smoking is on the decline (MacDonald).
Most of these worries that all teens in the upcoming generations will become potheads are
based on misguided and distorted ideas from the past.

Anti-Marijuana Decriminalization
Would you want your kids to end up abusing meth, heroin, or prescription pills because
they experimented with marijuana at a young age due to its availability? Marijuana should stay
criminalized because it causes health issues, leads to harder drugs, and inevitably falls into the
hands of kids and teens.
Marijuana causes long term health issues from heavy usage especially for people with
developing brains. It can damage your memory, make you 5 times as likely to have a heart
attack, and cause psychosis. It can also cause ADD in the babies of expectant women that
consume THC while pregnant (Samadi). People should not be consuming a drug that is so
damaging to your body and in some cases harmful to others around them. There have been
studies comparing the lethality of alcohol and pot thats results say alcohol would kill you faster.
This may be so but it doesnt mean marijuana isnt worse for you over an extended period of
time. Chief of Robotic Surgery at Lenox Hill Hospital Dr. David Samadi stated "It's just not a safe
drug over a long period Yes, short-term, heroin and alcohol are much worse than this, but

also jumping from the building could be worse than alcohol. Does it make alcohol safer? Bad
logic. It's just all-around bad" (Samadi). There are many similar technicalities to this one that
make marijuana seem less harmful than it really is. Most marijuana supporters ignore these or
are just not educated enough about the drug and its repercussions to know about them. Many
teens use marijuana for reasons like being uneducated about the consequences, or thinking
there are worse drugs out there that they could be doing. Marijuana causes health issues no
matter how you look at it so being ignorant to those repercussions should not be an excuse to
use the drug.
Especially while young, using marijuana will eventually lead you down a road to harder
drugs like prescription painkillers or heroin because pot itself is a gateway drug. For some
people, smoking cannabis is a method to temporarily get rid of unwanted feelings or situations a
person is experiencing. When the high fades, the feelings come back even stronger than before
which is usually the reason they continue using the drug or move on to harder drugs that they
think will fix their problems. In their article posted on the website, a researcher working with
Rehab Today stated When all the statistics were calculated, the Yale researchers found that in
both sexes, the individuals who had used marijuana in the past were 2.5 times as likely to abuse
prescription medications than their counterparts without a history of cannabis use (More
Evidence That Marijuana Is a Gateway Drug). Decriminalizing marijuana will lead to more and
more people trying the drug which will inevitably lead to more people going on to abuse
prescription pills or harder drugs. This would eventually induce more hard drugs on the streets
which would mean more crime in populated cities and towns.
Decriminalizing marijuana in the United States would predispose teens to be more likely
to try the drug. Teens are always going to be experimenting with paraphernalia like this but
marijuana is very harmful to their developing brains and making it legal would make it extremely
easy to obtain, thus leading to teens using it more often. Henry Berman stated in his article
published in the New York Times, Teenage brains have reached an important stage of
development that can be disrupted by marijuana, leading to long-term behavioral and learning
problems (Berman, NY Times). The more a person with a developing brain uses marijuana, the
more damaged their brain and memory can be in the future. Teens and kids can get hurt from
consuming too much THC in a small amount of time and in some cases they must be rushed to
a hospital for treatment. Henry Berman also stated in his article, In Colorado, after the
legalization of recreational marijuana, the number of visits to emergency rooms by children
under 10 for marijuana-related reasons doubled; a third of those children needed care in an
intensive care unit (Berman, NY Times). Kids can easily overload their system with too much
THC by eating edibles. These are treats like candy, cookies, and brownies infused with high
levels of THC. Small children often see these sweets and ingest much more than even an adult
should take at once because of their ignorance to the drug inside. This should never be a
concern for parents or the people who distribute the drug which is why it shouldnt be legal in
the first place. The least the distributors could do is make the packaging child proof to limit the
number of times children get rushed to the ER due to an overdose on edibles. There are many
reasons for keeping marijuana outlawed from health drawbacks to children potentially getting

harmed. Before you vote for or against the legalization of marijuana, think about all the other
lives that are affected by the choice you make and if you can live with the consequences.

Works Cited
Berman, Henry. "Legalizing Marijuana." The New York Times. The New York Times, 24 Oct.
2016. Web. 18 Nov. 2016.
Bowmer, Rick. "Mike Weinholtz, Utah Democratic Gov. Candidate, Pushes for Legal Medical
Marijuana after Wife Pleads Guilty." CBSNews. CBS Interactive, n.d. Web. 18 Nov.
2016.
"Dr. Samadi: Study on Marijuana vs. Alcohol Is Deceiving." F
ox News. FOX News Network, 1
Mar. 2015. Web. 18 Nov. 2016.
Levitan, Dave. "Is Marijuana Really a Gateway Drug?" F
actCheckorg. N.p., 13 Apr. 2015. Web.
18 Nov. 2016.
MacDonald, Fiona. "Huge Study Shows That Teens Smoke Less Weed the More It's Legalised."
ScienceAlert. ScienceAlert, 2 June 2016. Web. 18 Nov. 2016.
"More Evidence That Marijuana Is a Gateway Drug." Rehab International - Drug & Alcohol
Rehab Guides. Rehab Today, n.d. Web. 18 Nov. 2016.
Poll: Nearly 2/3 of Americans for Legal Marijuana. MSNBC. MSNBC, 2 Nov. 2016. Web. 18
Nov. 2016.
Vries, LLoyd. "Teens: Pot Easier To Buy Than Beer." CBSNews. CBS Interactive, 20 Aug. 2002.
Web. 18 Nov. 2016.

Reflection
Now that I have looked at both sides of the marijuana legalization controversy more
deeply, I can see how my perspective has shifted. I now understand that my values are usually
shaped around whatever is best for the majority of people. Marijuana being legalized would help
countless people and would hurt virtually no one which is why I am for it. Researching this
definitely did not make me change my opinion very much but I am now more aware of the other
sides arguments and the validity of them. I learned that the majority of people in the nation
(50-60%) actually do want marijuana legalized now which wasnt very close to what I thought at
first. I also learned that even though the anti-marijuana side has some valid arguments, a lot
(maybe even the majority) of them are based on fallacious ideologies from the past and others
are just distorted facts. For example Ive read countless articles on marijuana being a gateway
drug and leading to harder drugs later in life which has been proven to be a misconception.
I have learned that democracy is a very long process in some cases. In this case it has
taken an extremely long time for 28 states to legalize marijuana. Currently only 8 are legal for
recreational use and 20 are restricted to medical use. I honestly dont understand why this
movement hasnt totally succeeded yet since the majority of votes are positive for marijuana
being decriminalized. I think it might just be the minority groups that are so passionate about the
drug staying outlawed. I think it will be very hard for some people to change their values
surrounding the topic because a lot of them still believe the propaganda put out against
marijuana in the mid to late 1900s.
My political views have expanded after completing this project. Before the project when I
thought about a political issue, I would only consider the people that it immediately affected but
after this project, I have learned that issues affect countless different parties and there are
different stories for each side. For instance after this project I realized that this issue affects
cancer patients, children, the people who smoke marijuana, police, and the government among
others. I will definitely take what I learned in this experience and use it to help me understand
and form an opinion on current global issues in the future.