Should Marijuana be Legalised in the United Kingdom?

One complex yet open topic in modern society is in the legalisation of Marijuana. While statistically no one has died from an intake of the class B drug, this has created a movement for the government to take another look at the illegal classification but how wise would this be?

Alcohol is a drug in itself that is an increasingly high cause of death not only in the United Kingdom but globally also. If alcohol was discovered today, it's not hard to presume that it would be outlawed. In 2015, there were 8,758 deaths relating to alcohol, making that a rate of 14.2 per 100,000 people. Showing how when abused it can be an extremely negative substance, only strengthening the case for the legalisation of marijuana.

In the United States, under Barack Obama, each state had the right to legalise providing a regulation system is in place. While there has been no real strong backing from the government, the Liberal Democrats were the first to publicly support the decriminalisation of the drug during the 2017 General Election; possibly a ploy to attract a younger population of support that ultimately failed.

Nevertheless, fans of the most widely used drug in Britain, are still in favour of the drug being available without criminalisation being an issue, but statistics may argue against that. While as mentioned above the drug, also known as weed, has never killed anyone and your average dose would need to be consumed 20,000 - 40,000 times in order to kill you, if the carbon monoxide poisoning hasn't taken effect by then. Despite this it is not the drug killing or injuring people, it is the effects that stand in the way of future legalisation.

With alcohol having a negative effect while driving, so to does Marijuana, slowing down reactions and has been the cause of a significant amount of deaths in the United States; more so following the legalisation of the drug in some states. During 2013, 10 million people in the US aged 12 and over admitted to driving under the influence of illicit drugs according to the NSDUH. A US study in 2010 also found that of deadly crashes, 47% were under the influence of prescription drugs while 37% were of marijuana and 10% cocaine. What makes this significant is that while a study for alcohol intake is available for roadside tests, there is no accurate and instant way to determine drug intake on the road, with blood tests being the most efficient and by the time they occur, the drugs may be out of the users system or have wore off at this point, making it hard for regulations to put into effect.

Giovanni Roman has alcohol, marijuana and cocaine in his system as he killed his cousin in a 2017 crash.

Marijuana is not a completely negative drug, with many positive uses identified during studies including:

- it can be used to treat Glaucoma. The drug decreases pressure in the eyeball that would have caused damage to the optic nerve thus causing visual impairment

- can be used to treat epileptic seizures. A 2003 study showed that epileptic rats were much calmer under the influence of marijuana

- may halt cancer cells. While much more research is yet to be done on the effect of marijuana and cancer, studies have been positive and have shown that the drug makes some forms of cancer less aggressive

With marijuana, there are negatives and positives, with much trust placed in the user as each person, just like alcohol, can have different reactions to the substance. While as of yet there are no available, accurate and instant tests for marijuana usage, most notably during driving where the members of the public are also put in danger, until this can be rectified it's not likely that marijuana, for medical use or not will be legalised.