Since the hippie movement of the 1960s, marijuana and its surrounding subcultures have grown in popularity and tolerance. Even though the drug is mostly illegal, marijuana has gained popularity over alcohol, cigarettes and other drugs among high schoolers.
According to a poll in the New York Times, 40 percent of teenagers reported drinking alcohol in 2013, as opposed to 53 percent in the late 1990s. Cigarette smoking in teenagers also dipped down to below 10 percent, the lowest ever reported. In 2012, 36 percent of high school seniors reported smoking marijuana in the past year, which has risen from the high 20th percentile since 2005.
Though medical marijuana is legal in 24 states, efforts to push the legalization of marijuana for recreational uses are increasing.
Despite this growing trend, only two states, Colorado and Washington, have legalized marijuana for recreational use for people 21 and over. Other states, such as New York, California, Alaska and Florida, are in the process of creating legislation toward its legalization.
Adults ages 18 to 34 are in favor of legalizing marijuana by a staggering 49 percentage-point margin, while 59 percent of people aged 65 and older are opposed to efforts made toward legalization, according to a study done by the Wall Street Journal.
These respondents also said they would be more open to the legalization of marijuana if the same laws in Colorado and Washington were applied throughout the United States. The growing success in legalizing marijuana is attributed to creating laws that restrict it like those for alcohol. As with alcohol, there are proportional limits for smoking marijuana and driving under the influence that are equivalent to drinking and driving, as well as consumption in public still remaining illegal.
Locally, Washington D.C. moved toward legalizing marijuana on Feb. 4 by decriminalizing the use of the drug, meaning that the possession of marijuana was shifted from being a federal crime to a civil offense. Smoking marijuana in public was not decriminalized, but the maximum jail sentence was reduced from six months to 60 days.
The motivation for legalizing and decriminalizing marijuana is not to create easier access to drugs for adults and teenagers, but rather to save billions of dollars in spending toward federal and state implementation of current policy.
A great deal of law enforcement and prosecution efforts, as well as prison resources, are being spent on relatively small marijuana-related offenses rather than other, more dangerous crimes. If marijuana were legalized or decriminalized, resources would be available for more dangerous threats than teenagers experimenting with drugs.