A little speech I wrote.

I wrote this speech today, for my speech and debate class, the due date being... today. I'm a procrastinator, but at least I got it done. Anyways, this is a persuasive speech, obviously. Feel free to show this to other people or repost it, just link it back to the city.

\t"Prohibition cannot be enforced for the simple reason that the majority of American people do not want it enforced and are resiting it's enforcement. That being so, the orderly thing to do under our form of government is to abolish a law which cannot be enforced, a law which the people of the country do not want enforced." This is an exerpt from a speech from Mayor Laguardia given in New York about the prohibition of alcohol. I believe this quote, and that thought also applies for any other substance. I strongly believe in the decriminalization of cannabis sativa, more commonly known as marijuana. In Holland, where marijuana has been decriminalized, the use of hard drugs has gone down since it's decriminalization and the regular use of marijuana was not significantly increased. There has also been no proven adverse after affects of marijuana, nearly every other legal drug has adverse and addicting effects. Even caffeine is more addicting and harmful then marijuana.

\tEven our first president, George Washington, was a strong advocate for the hemp plant. It is well known that Washington advocated the growing of hemp for it's purposes of commercial uses, but there is also at least one instance in his diary that shows he was also using it for recreational purposes. An entry from his journal on May 12 1765 reads: "Sowed hemp at muddy hole by swamp." Later that same year on August 7 his diary reads: "--began to sperate the male from femal hemp, rather too late." While this could indicate he was trying to seperate the plants to make stronger hemp, it is more likely that he was seperating the female plants to make more potent marijuana for recreational and/or medicinal purposes. Since making sure that the female plant does not get fertilized by the male plant, which produces more, and more potent marijuana.

\tThere is more harm caused by the criminaliztion of marijuana every year then it has caused to it's users, ever. Every year thousands of people are put into JAIL for possesing marijuana and using it themselves, they are the only ones being affected by what they are doing, and are not causing harm to anyone. It is safe to say that at least a few of these people have families, is it not? Now what is more harmful, and more cost effective for the use of our tax money. Putting a person in jail and removing them from their family and causing turmoil, or letting the same person stay with their family, continue to work, pay taxes, and enjoy a plant in their home?

\tIf decriminalization were achieved not only could we attain extra revenue for taxes by taxing it, like we do with tobacco and liquor, but we could also divert our police forces from policing a harmless plant to policing actual criminals and stoping actual crime instead of something that a single person is doing to themselves. We could also actually house all of our inmates in our prisons. Due to large number of inmates in prison from drug crimes, inmates are released from prison early so that the new inmates can be admitted. Now, what do you think is better; police worrying about actual crimes, extra tax revenue for the country, and the ability to house our criminals for their entire sentence, or sending thousands of people a year to jail for using a harmless plant, destroying families, diverting police attention, and overcrowding our prisons?


\t"annual drug deaths: tobacco- 395,000; 'legal' drugs- 38,000; illegal drug overdoses- 5,200; marijuana- 0. considering government subsidizes of tobacco, just what is our government protecting us from in the drug war?" This is a portion of a speech given by Ralph Nader. There has not been a single study that has stated that marijuana has caused any long term damage that has been reproduced. While marijuana users usually inhale deeper and longer then tobacco users, the sheer quality of marijuana used on average in comparison to tobacco users more then defeats the differences in inhalation length and size. While an average tobacco smoker consumes 10 cigarettes a day and all the way up to 40 cigarettes a day or more, heavy marijuana users consume somewhere near 5 marijuana cigarettes a day.

\tWith the decriminalization of the cannabis sativa plant, our country could gain increased tax revenue, decreased use in hard drugs, decreased prison crowding, the ease of medicinal use for patients, increased freedom for citizens to do what they want with their body, and to move the polices attention from marijuana related crimes to crimes that are actually effecting more people then the user of marijuana. After all this, you need to remember one thing, of the three major substances that are used in this country; alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana, which one can you name that has never killed anyone, ever?

 

Yea, I was supposed to give it on thursday... but I slept through my alarm. I'm giving it on monday now.

 

Haha, actually I quit smoking a while back, but anyways, sorry about not updating havnt been checking here a lot. The class as a whole liked it, my stoner friends loved it, my stoner teacher was impressed and gave me full points, and the conservative kids were like "Uhhh... marijuana is still bad caus those commercials told us so.". Overall I think it went well.