Considering the difficulties related to criminalizing marijuana, it only seems natural for the government to want to do everything in its power to have it legalized, as penalizing marijuana offenders costs society enormous resources, particularly given that the number of marijuana-related offenses is on a continuous rise. It is surely difficult to determine whether state authorities are actually interested in penalizing individuals who have no criminal record and who seem to be completely harmless as a result of being caught with the substance. Hundreds of millions of dollars (even billions maybe) can be saved by putting an end to the war against marijuana. It appears the government is unable to tell the difference between real criminals and people who simply want to achieve certain mental states by using marijuana.

Society would most probably be better off by keeping marijuana users free and it would actually profit from the enterprise, considering that legalizing marijuana would bring on a whole new industry. Moreover, the resources previously invested in criminalizing marijuana would be available for the authorities to use in dealing with authentic criminals. Prisons are certainly not the place for marijuana users, as their offense is much less severe in comparison to most crimes that put people behind...

Although the authorities prefer to claim that prison is a place where criminals are corrected, most fact point toward the belief that prison time is really meant to punish offenders, with some of them experiencing serious mental and physical abuse during their stay in prison.
Works cited:

Anelauskas, Valdas Discovering America as It Is (Atlanta, GA: Clarity Press, 1999)

Gerber, Rudolph J. Legalizing Marijuana: Drug Policy Reform and Prohibition Politics (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2004)

Goode, Erich The Marijuana Smokers (New York: Basic Books, 1970)

Mauer, Marc "The Hidden Problem of Time Served in Prison," Social Research Mikos, Robert A. "On the Limits of Supremacy: Medical Marijuana and the States' Overlooked Power to Legalize Federal Crime," Vanderbilt Law Review 62.5 (2009)

Shepard, Edward M. And Blackley, Paul R. "The Impact of Marijuana Law Enforcement in an Economic Model of Crime," Journal of Drug Issues 37.2 (2007)

74.2 (2007)

Weisheit, Ralph…