Legalize Cannabis for Recreational and Medicinal Purposes

Decriminalizing cannabis would have many beneficial factors. The cost of the drug war since 1970 has been roughly about 545 billion dollars. The war has also increased the prison population twelve fold from 1980 to 2,000. Alcohol causes around 75,000 deaths in the US every year, 443,000 people die every year from tobacco, compared to cannabis where throughout the entire history of mankind, not a single person has ever died directly from cannabis. According to the Harvard Economist cannabis would also bring in 46.7 billion dollars a year. If weed was decriminalized and/or legalized, the money that was taken away from primary and post-primary education to fund the war on drugs, which has been extremely ineffective and unpopular, could be returned.