Assignment 4- Jasir Rahman- Weed is the Devil

Weed is the devil.  In the home of 2 healthcare providers, such sentiments have been repeated militantly throughout my life.  With the death of every member of the opioid epidemic, with every tragedy that besets thousands of families across the country, with the passing of the sons and daughters of friends and family, comes wild speculation about how the victim of addiction and overdose all got their start with the blunt.  While I still agree that cannabis is a substance that can potentially put oneself in compromising situations, the policy aspect is what I have come to question throughout my life.

Ironically, while I was one of the few kids in my 8th-grade class that identified with more liberal ideologies, I found that it was the white, rich, privileged, conservatives that made up the majority of my class that supported the legalization of marijuana.  With the backdrop of the election in 2016, the halls of my school were filled with political discourse.  While I insisted that the effects of cannabinoids on the brain were impairing in the long-term and warranted being illegal (I even attempted to e-mail pieces of evidence that supported my case to an especially ardent defender of the substance), I still was constantly told that the effects are not that bad.  

This simplistic analysis of whether or not weed is harmful was the extent of our debates, so looking to get an edge up on my opponents, I looked into the impacts of actual legislation that was meant to prevent the use of the substance.  My findings were shocking.  Not only was the use of weed still widely unaffected, but such policies targetted racial minorities, who were both charged with use at a higher rate, and faced much longer sentences than their white counterparts.  Such injustice as a result of systemic racism caused intense cognitive dissonance in me.  Luckily, I was introduced to decriminalization as a solution to my dilemma.  Preventing people of color from disproportionally being impacted by the criminal justice system, and still providing punitive measures to hopefully curb the use of marijuana provided the most comprehensive solution to my problem, although not perfect.  If putting people in jail isn't stopping the use of marijuana, then we may as well combat the systemic racism that is a direct result of the policy