Medical Marijuana

For my blog series this semester, I’m going to write about medical marijuana. I am interested in this topic because during my Communications 150 class in the Spring 2016, one of my classmate presented a 7-minute persuasive speech on how it should be legalized. Prior to this presentation, my sister was able to lease a place for her new kid’s playground area. The person who was there before was running a marijuana dispensary and he was not able to open anymore because it was near a school, which is prohibited. I found this topic fascinating because I have heard many stories about medical marijuana but have not done any research myself. From my classmate’s presentation, I learned that medical marijuana brings tons of money for the state, and it can be very useful for education. This made me very curious on why are there so many people who are against medical marijuana when it has positive impacts to the states. Especially in California, budget cuts has been a big problem. It has caused many students to be in debt, and many students to not be able to go to college.

Growing up, my parents were not familiar with marijuana, they only knew the negative side to it. In school, smoking seems to be the thing for the cool kids. While most of my classmates were able to name different types of marijuana, I was clueless. After searching for articles in The New York Times, I believe this topic is appropriate since it has approximately 65 articles during the past 12 months in the United States, which I believe is the right amount for me to read in the next 7 weeks. Also, medical marijuana has been a controversial topic for a long time. With the 2016 election coming up in November, it will be interesting to read about how the 2016 presidential candidates view about this topic.

In the article, In California, Marijuana Is Smelling More Like Big Business, Lovett states that, “Musicians like Snoop Dogg and one of Bob Marley’s sons, Ky-Mani Marley, have been meeting with officials about licensing marijuana grown here”. I find this to be very surprising how Snoop Dogg would take his time out to meet with officials. I know that he’s a recreational smoker, and the lyrics to some of his tracks talks about smoking. However, I never expected him to take the time of his day out and try to make a change. Usually, celebrities would make a post about a problem, and wait for everyone else to make the change. It made me feel a bit happy knowing that Snoop Dog went out of his way to make changes for something he believes in. His actions will influence many people. This gave me an idea that I should look more into how celebrities affect people’s opinion about medical marijuana.

In contrast, there are people who are skeptical about marijuana and feel that the laws should be more strict. In the article How Much Is Too Much Marijuana to Drive? Lawmakers Wonder, Bromwhich comments that “California’s Adult Use of Marijuana Act, which proposes to legalize recreational marijuana, includes a provision for $15 million to be given to the California Highway Patrol over five years to develop protocols and best practices for determining when a person is driving while impaired, including from marijuana use”. I never knew that legalizing something can cost so much money. However, after reading this article, I have a better understanding of why some people are skeptical about marijuana. We’re all afraid of drunk drivers. When someone is drunk, they are unable to make decisions for themselves. But what happen when someone is high and driving? How do you measure how high they are? Should people not drive while they are high at all? Or do they have the rights to drive when they’re high knowing that it’s a medicine prescribed by a doctor? There is alot of questions that I am curious about that I have not found answers to.

Overall, I believe medical marijuana would be a good topic for the next 7 weeks because it has so many different categories to it. I’m super interested in this topic. Yet, It’s good that I don’t know too much about it, which makes me very excited to do more research on it. Lastly, since we live in San Francisco, a very diverse place. It makes this topic very fun to write about because each person has a different opinion, and I look forward to hear about them.