AP Gov. Post #1

http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/14/us/marijuana-legalization-tipping-point/index.html?hpt=hp_c2

   This article discusses the general public's growing acceptance of the idea of legalizing marijuana. The movement has recently made several large steps forward; respected doctor Sanjay Gupta announced his support of medical marijuana, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that mandatory minimum drug sentences would begin to be curved, and New York's stop-and-frisk policy was declared to be unconstitutional. All of these events show a growing realization that more and more Americans are in favor of the idea of legalizing marijuana. Certain facts in this article show that some government officials are exhibiting less resistance to this controversial idea as well; as this article notes, the government could have shut down pot legalization in Washington and Colorado through several ways, such as prohibiting the IRS from allowing tax reductions when purchasing marijuana.
   I have mixed feelings about legalizing pot. I understand that it would be very useful for medicinal purposes and would supposedly help put more money into our economy, but I also think it would be more abused than before legalization. There are positive effects that legalizing pot would have on our society, but there are also many negative effects. As this article mentions, pot has negative long term effects on your health, such as short term memory loss, an increased risk of heart attack, and a higher potential for strokes and birth defects. This shows that legalizing pot could be detrimental to our society's health and well-being. The shaky positive to legalizing marijuana is that it could possibly help our economy's growth; however, this proposed economic uplift is very vague and not well outlined. Another positive to legalizing marijuana would be more room in prison and less work for police officers in regards to people charged with possessing pot.
   I feel like the article I chose does a decent job of remaining unbiased and reporting plain facts. It surprised me to read about the dramatic change in the statistics of the amount of people who had tried marijuana; it's a huge change to go from 4/100 having tried it in 1969 to 4/10 people having tried it in 2013. That's a 36% increase in 44 years! This just goes to show how effective the war on drugs has been and how the public opinion has started to change in favor of legalizing pot.
   This article relates to AP Gov. because legalizing marijuana is currently a hot button issue in American politics. There are many conflicting sides to this argument, many of which have their own unique and valid perspectives as to how this issue should be addressed. I believe it's important to be educated about the pros and cons of a debate as heated as this before forming any kind of opinion.