Research shows that marijuana damages short term memory, distorts perceptions, impairs judgment and complex motor skills, alters heart rates, and has the potential to trigger severe anxiety, paranoia, and lethargy (www.ndsn.com). Yet I also feel its effects are in many ways less harmful than those of alcohol and tobacco-for instance, alcohol's potential to cause cirrhosis and tobacco's links to lung cancer and heart disease. Both are considered carcinogenic. In addition, alcohol is cited as a factor in half of this country's highway fatalities, half of all arrests made for any criminal charge-including homicides-and one-fourth of all suicides. In 1972, the National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse estimated the social costs of America's alcohol habit to be $15 billion a year (www.ndsn.com); it has steadily increased since then. .
When comparing tobacco, alcohol, and marijuana, there is strong evidence that marijuana has the least addictive power (www.peretto.com). However, this does not hide the fact that all three can have a strong impact on an individual. As with all drugs, they are capable of disrupting home life, affecting job performance, and causing withdrawal from society. In my opinion, all drugs share this power on equal terms because of the emotional problems of the people who use them; no single drug has potential for harm than any other in terms of social impacts.
The first of three strategies used to fight marijuana was silence. It was believed that if youth did not hear about marijuana, they would not become curious and experiment with it. Therefore, in the 1930's, discussion about marijuana was forbidden in all public schools, and from 1934 to 1956, the Motion Picture Association of America banned all films showing the use of narcotics (www.legalize.com). The strategy did not work as well as hoped, so anti-marijuana groups adopted the next strategy: exaggeration. .
The goal was to scare potential marijuana users.
