Marijuana Deserves an Age Limit Just Like Alcohol

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Marijuana Deserves an Age Limit Just Like Alcohol

One of the main things that has become clear to me in my 9ish years of being a member of this site is that people are going disagree absolutely, unequivocally so, about a variety of issues. However, the other lesson that has become apparent is that one learns a lot more about not only themselves, but also the world around them through aging, growing up, and experiencing life. This is not to say anything against teenagers (I'm a bit beyond this bracket as I am 21 now), but I think people need to recognize that people do need to be treated differently based on their age.

While I know a bunch of you guys are going to be upset with that and insist that you're "Adults" and should be treated as this, well the fact is, you ARE NOT. Yes you are much older and are finally being faced with the prospect of making decisions for yourself and taking on an increased amount of responsibilities, but at the same time, there is so much of life that you have not yet had to face, and you haven't yet had to be confronted with what it truely means to live independent from others' rules.

So that is to pre-empt the main point of my article. Basically I started smoking pot about a month after I turned 16, at the start of my Junior year in high school. I do not condemn smoking marijuana, and I guess you could say "I've "Earned" the status of "pot head" within the last five years. Based on this, I am going to say a thing or two about the pro's and cons of marijuana.

I don't condemn it, I don't think it's this horrible, life-destroying drug that the government makes it out to be..because it isn't. I wrote a term paper on it my junior year of high school, complete with many sources, basically it is a huge smear campaign that isn't based on merit, but rather on conservative politicians' own personal opinions. I don't think people as young as 12 to like 15/16 should be smoking pot, I think there is a lot that you loose in starting it so early, but I also understand the appeal especially after one experiences their first high. I forget how old one feels, and to the same degree how mature they actually are in their teen years, but that doesn't mean that you guys know it all. Far from it.

I don't think pot, dope, weed whatever slang that I'll be using, is a horrible drug, however I also don't think it's all-good. I think the main flaw in the arguments on this page is that people are so quick to say that either pot is 100% wrong or 100% right, but neither of those is correct. My view is that among all of the drugs, it is by far the BEST for you. Think about it, alcohol destroys your liver and is addictive, not only that but the addiction can manifest into your personal life an destroy it. Not only that, but driving drunk, or drinking to excess are unequivically going to lead to death than driving high or smoking to "excess" (because it is basically impossible to overdose on pot). I really do not want to get into the health arguments of everything and how much worse alcohol and tabacco is for you than pot, because those are so obvious, that I do not feel as though I need to justify the health issues.

I guess my main message is that weed is not this horrible anti-good drug that the govt or a lot of "straight edge" people make it out to be (afterall... they get their information from the same biased sources that continue to illegalize it, without taking the time to research it themselves), but I think it needs to be regulated in an age-appropriate way. I think that if any of you are debating smoking pot (which by the way are based on my personal experiences and the reasons why I both started and continued to smoke it) then you need to be the right age. It's not the drug itself that is bad, it's the age and the mindsight that you are in when you first get high that is the problem, because there is so much you don't understand about yourselves, let alone other people and the world and how society works. I think that deciding to smoke pot is a personal decision that each person needs to really like REALLY think about (also ppl don't care if you turn them down for smoking because that means it's just more left for them to smoke, so don't ever worry about that) because it's not the drug itself that messes people up, its the person themselves and the issues they have beforehand.

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