Decriminalization Of Non-medical Cannabis In The United States
Attempts to decriminalize cannabis (marijuana) in the United States began in the 1970s. As views on cannabis have liberalized (peaking in 1978), almost half the states have either approved it for medical use, decriminalized it for recreational use, or completely legalized it.
Proponents of decriminalization argue that legalizing cannabis would free billions of dollars now used to prosecute users, provide several billions in tax revenue, free a substantial amount of law-enforcement resources which could be used to prevent more serious crimes, free a substantial amount of prison resources, and reduce the income of street gangs and organized crime who grow, import, process, and sell cannabis. Opponents argue that cannabis on the street today has a much higher percent of THC with a stronger drug effect and that decriminalization will lead to usage, increased crime, and abuse of more dangerous illicit drugs.
In 2005, Gonzales v. Raich, ruled in a 6-3 decision that the Commerce Clause and Supremacy Clause of the United States Constitution allowed the federal government to ban the use of cannabis (including medical use) because federal law is "supreme" and trumps state law to the contrary.
Read more about Decriminalization Of Non-medical Cannabis In The United States: History, Arguments in Support, Advocacy
Famous quotes containing the words united states, united and/or states:
“Today’s difference between Russia and the United States is that in Russia everybody takes everybody else for a spy, and in the United States everybody takes everybody else for a criminal.”
—Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921–1990)
“As a Tax-Paying Citizen of the United States I am entitled to a voice in Governmental affairs.... Having paid this unlawful Tax under written Protest for forty years, I am entitled to receive from the Treasury of “Uncle Sam” the full amount of both Principal and Interest.”
—Susan Pecker Fowler (1823–1911)
“By intervening in the Vietnamese struggle the United States was attempting to fit its global strategies into a world of hillocks and hamlets, to reduce its majestic concerns for the containment of communism and the security of the Free World to a dimension where governments rose and fell as a result of arguments between two colonels’ wives.”
—Frances Fitzgerald (b. 1940)