Legalizing marijuana, education and open-mindedness could lead to understanding:

Staff Editorial:

From chemo patients who are trying to find relief from the massive number of pills they must take, to the college students who look for a short reprieve from the pressures of performing at their best every day, the number of individuals who smoke pot has been steadily growing. We, the Ranger staff, feel that it’s time to legalize weed once and for all.

Chemotherapy has fundamentally altered the way we approach cancer treatment, but chemo comes with an incredibly high cost. The patients who are subjected to many rigorous rounds of chemo must also endure a battery of other medications that wreak havoc on that person’s body. Many of those medications are meant to regulate mood or appetite but can have interactions with all the other prescribed medications.

Marijuana has the unique ability of lifting a person’s mood while also increasing their appetite so that they can maintain their strength. Marijuana’s medicinal purposes don’t simply stop with cancer patients. This drug also helps those with glaucoma and other illnesses. This alone should be reason enough to legalize marijuana.

Another reason we feel marijuana should get a second chance is the same reason alcohol prohibition failed; if people want it, people will get it. By criminalizing alcohol, our country forced liquor producers into a black market of sorts, which made alcoholic beverage sales a much more difficult proposition. In the same way, the drug cartels are controlling most of the weed market and that’s bad news for end users. By decriminalizing marijuana, we take away the cartels’ power and generate a legitimate and safe environment for consumers.

Besides the medicinal and economic factors, the Ranger staff believes it’s time for the government to stop impressing its own moral ideologies upon the people.  Let citizens determine for themselves if pot should be included in their lives. We should be allowed the same opportunity to develop healthy boundaries with marijuana like the way we learn to manage our relationship with beer at a bar or cigarettes after a long day at work.

What we need now are more people who are willing to stand up and call their state representatives. We need people who are willing to educate their friends and neighbors on the potential health benefits.

It’s time that we make some forward progress in the area of marijuana legalization. We feel like it’s time for the government to decriminalize marijuana and allow the people to access it on their terms in a safe and legal way.