I am critiquing my colleague Ms. Tran's blog post SAY "NO" TO MARIJUANA. She clearly did a good job because a lot of people are critiquing her blog.
Her blog is well worded and is very captivating. It also demonstrates that she genuinely cares about people. She wants Texas to be prosperous and wants our children to be safe. In this entry I will address whether continuing to criminalize marijuana will accomplish this as she believes.
She opens with a statement about how the media depicts it being cool to drink and smoke tobacco. This is true. I also agree that this is a problem, but I don't see how this is relevant to marijuana . Maybe she's implying that by legalizing marijuana, add campaigns would appear to make it cool and more movies and TV shows would depict marijuana use. In Colorado, where cannabis is legal, the cannabis industry is not allowed to advertise (according to reuters.com). TV shows and movies already portray smoking marijuana as cool. I don't see how legalizing marijuana would create more of that.
Later she makes a claim about how illegal drug use is associated with other more violent crimes. This statement, along with the work she cites, does not distinguish between marijuana and all other illegal drugs. I think her argument would be more compelling if she only made claims about marijuana since that's what this article is about.
Ms. Tran mentions the children several times in her article so I think it's important to clarify that if marijuana were to become legal in Texas it would only be legal for those over 21. This is the way it is in other states where cannabis is legal. As far as whether or not children would use more cannabis if it were made legal I think the answer is 'no'. Being illegal makes smoking cannabis something kids do to be "cool." If it were legalized, fewer kids would smoke cannabis, I believe. This would be especially true, I think, if the schools made an effort to teach kids about how cannabis can turn people into lazy, weak characters that no one would desire to be.
She makes an interesting argument that I have never heard before in the debate to legalize marijuana. She claims that if Texas were to legalize cannabis, more government resources would go into drug education, rehabilitation and treatment. The cost of this, she says, could outweigh the tax revenue gained from taxing the sales of marijuana. She doesn't provide a reason to believe this, but it could certainly be true and I am curious to know if this will be observed in Washington and Colorado where cannabis has been decriminalized. One thing she failed to consider, which our college Brady Ryan pointed out, is that Texas would also save money by incarcerating fewer people if cannabis were decriminalized. Almost $4 million per day according to Mr. Ryan. This could have the potential to put decriminalizing marijuana back in favor for the taxpayer.
Mr Ryan also points out that marijuana related deaths are in the double digits, and that since Colorado decriminalized cannabis, crime has gone down over 10% and that violent crimes have gone down 5%. It seems to me people who smoke cannabis are really only harming themselves (and possibly the people that care for them and depend on them, but only because they care for or depend on them). Shouldn't people have the right to choose whether they do this to themselves? Isn't it not much different than saying that women should have the right to have an abortion? And most importantly, wouldn't the criminal justice system be better off spending it's limited resources on regulating firearms and on prosecuting violent criminals? You decide.
Her blog is well worded and is very captivating. It also demonstrates that she genuinely cares about people. She wants Texas to be prosperous and wants our children to be safe. In this entry I will address whether continuing to criminalize marijuana will accomplish this as she believes.
She opens with a statement about how the media depicts it being cool to drink and smoke tobacco. This is true. I also agree that this is a problem, but I don't see how this is relevant to marijuana . Maybe she's implying that by legalizing marijuana, add campaigns would appear to make it cool and more movies and TV shows would depict marijuana use. In Colorado, where cannabis is legal, the cannabis industry is not allowed to advertise (according to reuters.com). TV shows and movies already portray smoking marijuana as cool. I don't see how legalizing marijuana would create more of that.
Later she makes a claim about how illegal drug use is associated with other more violent crimes. This statement, along with the work she cites, does not distinguish between marijuana and all other illegal drugs. I think her argument would be more compelling if she only made claims about marijuana since that's what this article is about.
Ms. Tran mentions the children several times in her article so I think it's important to clarify that if marijuana were to become legal in Texas it would only be legal for those over 21. This is the way it is in other states where cannabis is legal. As far as whether or not children would use more cannabis if it were made legal I think the answer is 'no'. Being illegal makes smoking cannabis something kids do to be "cool." If it were legalized, fewer kids would smoke cannabis, I believe. This would be especially true, I think, if the schools made an effort to teach kids about how cannabis can turn people into lazy, weak characters that no one would desire to be.
She makes an interesting argument that I have never heard before in the debate to legalize marijuana. She claims that if Texas were to legalize cannabis, more government resources would go into drug education, rehabilitation and treatment. The cost of this, she says, could outweigh the tax revenue gained from taxing the sales of marijuana. She doesn't provide a reason to believe this, but it could certainly be true and I am curious to know if this will be observed in Washington and Colorado where cannabis has been decriminalized. One thing she failed to consider, which our college Brady Ryan pointed out, is that Texas would also save money by incarcerating fewer people if cannabis were decriminalized. Almost $4 million per day according to Mr. Ryan. This could have the potential to put decriminalizing marijuana back in favor for the taxpayer.
Mr Ryan also points out that marijuana related deaths are in the double digits, and that since Colorado decriminalized cannabis, crime has gone down over 10% and that violent crimes have gone down 5%. It seems to me people who smoke cannabis are really only harming themselves (and possibly the people that care for them and depend on them, but only because they care for or depend on them). Shouldn't people have the right to choose whether they do this to themselves? Isn't it not much different than saying that women should have the right to have an abortion? And most importantly, wouldn't the criminal justice system be better off spending it's limited resources on regulating firearms and on prosecuting violent criminals? You decide.
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