#8

According to the article “The $78 million bag”, the author debates the importance of legalization and regulation of marijuana. Local laws and enforcement of marijuana carry out unevenly and unfairly and it costs tremendous amount of money, $78 million. City and county officials are wasting their time and money for arresting, prosecuting, and jailing people who even possesses small amount of weed. It hinders court system and costs lots of money to running the system. Cook County residents are paying $70 million a year to arresting and prosecuting mediocre crime and $8 million cost to tax payers. The author stated African-Americans account arrests and convictions are high for this type of crime. Also, the money is leaking by paying overtime policemen who appearing in court for five minute. The huge amount of money should come out of taxpayer’s pocket and while those can be used for severe crimes. Officials from the departments stated that the state and federal should handle the main changes in marijuana law. However, the officials have not discussed the issue yet; they even avoided and ignored to face it. The writer cited that you get a ticket or get in lockup for possessing small amounts of drugs depend on where you live since the law enforced unfairly. The marijuana law should be legalized, regulated, and taxed by the state and federal level to stop waste our money and our time.

I couldn’t choose my topic article from blackboard until I read the article about online civil complaint. “We The People” is an internet civil complaint website which was opened last month by White House. On the website, about 201 petitions went up and 13 of them were about marijuana. Also the total number of signed petitioners is about 10 million and the most popular petition is legalization of marijuana with 56,000 signed petitioners. However, there is no response at all. I started to think about the drug uses and how our money is using by government. The article $78 million bag became an interesting topic after I read the article about civil complaint website and I choose to discuss it.