Global Breaking News - Monday, December 23, 2024

How Can Marijuana Be Sold Safely?
Washington State and Colorado are trying to figure out how to legalize marijuana without encouraging use or sustaining a black market. Soon the rest of the nation may be facing the same task. How can marijuana be legalized safely? What steps should governments take, and what should they avoid?
* figure out = 알아내다/ legalize = 합법화하다/ marijuana = 대마초/ sustain = 계속(지속)시키다/ black market = 암시장

 어떻게 대마초가 안전하게 합법화 될 수 있나요? 정부가 취할 조치와 피해야 하는 것은?

1. How to Regulate, and How Not To
Don't get greedy. States shouldn’t become financially dependent on consumers who are chemically dependent.
 
2. A Risky Habit We Shouldn’t Encourage
Cannabis is potentially addictive and harmful to the brain, especially in adolescents. As a society, we are going in the wrong direction on marijuana.
 
3. Legalizing, and Ending a Gross Injustice
I'm not saying marijuana is a good thing. But as a parent of black children, I’m far more worried about my kids needlessly going to jail than getting high.
 
4. Lessons From Prohibition
Prohibition was essentially just deregulation – the opposite of what is needed. States should regulate and tax the marijuana market.
 
5. Finding Just the Right Tax Rate
Set the rate too high, and people will keep buying weed from the guy on the street. Too low, and you’re leaving revenue on the table and use might boom.
 
6. Legalization in the U.S. and Crime in Mexico
Creating a legal supply in the U.S. would cut down drug revenue for Mexican trafficking organizations, but would that make them less violent?


Sample Essay

A Risky Habit We Shouldn’t Encourage

Converging evidence suggests cannabis is addictive for many and harmful to adolescents and to those at risk for mental illness.

About 9 percent of people who use cannabis become addicted. The younger one starts, the greater the risk of addiction. Cannabis withdrawal includes craving, trouble sleeping, poor appetite, anxiety, malaise, tension and depressed mood that impairs daily functioning and predicts relapse to cannabis use. The cannabis withdrawal syndrome has been compared to that of nicotine, which is of undoubted clinical significance. Nicotine is very addictive. Compared with nicotine, marijuana is probably less addictive, but more harmful to brain function, particularly young brains – and recent data indicate that marijuana use may increase the addictiveness of nicotine.

Regular cannabis use has been associated with an 8- to 10-point drop in I.Q. over the course of 20 years, a change that would bring one from the 50th percentile to just over the 30th. Again, those who started regular use in adolescence experienced greater I.Q. decline than those who started as adults. Marijuana worsens cognitive performance, particularly in the domains of verbal learning, verbal working memory and attention accuracy. Some deficits appear to be lasting. Attention accuracy deficits associated with cannabis use do not improve with abstinence. These results suggest hippocampal, subcortical and prefrontal cortex abnormalities, some of which may be lasting. Brain white matter connectivity is adversely affected to a greater extent in those who begin regular cannabis use in early adolescence. Animal studies also show neuroplastic changes in areas of the brain associated with addiction, like the nucleus accumbens.

Cannabis use increases the risk for schizophrenia in people who have underlying genetic risk, and early age at first use is associated with earlier age at onset of psychosis. Two common gene variants have been identified that, combined with cannabis use, increase the risk for psychosis. A minority of those who use cannabis develop psychosis, but we are currently unable to predict who is at risk. So increasing use, which legalization is bound to do, will increase the numbers of those at risk who are exposed and harmed.

The public must be educated that cannabis is both potentially addictive and harmful to the brain, with a greater effect on the most vulnerable among us, kids. Where it has been legalized, its use has increased, particularly among young people who are at greatest risk from exposure. This trend of legalization will be difficult to reverse, even as we learn more about the harmful effects of regular cannabis use at early ages.

Another factor to consider is that the marijuana available today is more potent than ever. THC levels have been rising while cannabidiol levels, protective for anxiety and psychosis, have been decreasing. Recent increases in hospital admissions for cannabis dependence treatment correlate with potency and with legalization.

Thus legalization increases availability, increases use, increases dependence and increases harm, particularly to vulnerable groups like adolescents and those already at risk for mental illness. As a society, we are going in the wrong direction on marijuana.