Marijuana is percieved as addictive. Obvious statement right? Well there's a story to it. Under the Controlled Substances Act of 1970, marijuana is classified as a Schedule I drug on the basis that is has "a high potential for abuse." This means the perception is that people get on marijuana, they get hooked and become "potheads," and it begins to dominate their lives. This unquestionably happens in some cases. But it also happens in the case of alcohol, and alcohol as we all know is perfectly legal.
Marijuana has "no accepted medical use". Wait! That contradicts everything I have heard from activists about this drug. Whose right? Well, Marijuana seems to yield considerable medical benefits for many Americans with ailments ranging from glaucoma to cancer, but these benefits have not been accepted well enough on a national level. Medical use of marijuana remains a serious national controversy.
Marijuana has also been historically linked with narcotics (such as heroin). The first piece of federal legislation to formally regulate marijuana was the Narcotics Act of 1914, which regulated marijuana, heroin, and cocaine. The only trouble is that cocaine and marijuana are not technically narcotics. The word narcotic has historically referred to opium derivatives such as heroin and morphine. And because of this, people believed the substance was bad, and thus it was banned.
On a personal note, marijuana is associated with unfashionable lifestyles. To but it nicely, marijuana is often thought of as a drug for hippies and losers. Since it's hard to feel enthusiastic about the prospects of enabling people to become hippies and losers, imposing criminal sanctions for marijuana possession functions as a form of communal "tough love." Therefore, these people can get on with there life instead of looking at a world "controlled by the man, dude."
Pot was also once associated with oppressed ethnic groups. The intense anti-marijuana movement of the 1930s dovetailed nicely with the intense anti-Chicano movement of the 1930s. Marijuana was associated with Mexican Americans, and a ban on marijuana was seen as a way of discouraging Mexican-American subcultures from developing. And thus instead of pressuring the people like we do today, they simply pressured the drug. Today, thanks in large part to the very public popularity of marijuana among whites during the 1960s and 1970s, marijuana is no longer seen as what one might call an ethnic drug, but the groundwork for the anti-marijuana movement was laid down at a time when marijuana was seen as an encroachment on the U.S. majority-white culture.
So as we can see, there are many reasons pot became illegal, but the facts in the first paragraph are enough to keep it illegal. Pot destroys lives without people realizing it, but I have seen first hand one of my friends become a slave to the drug. She worked to get money for the drug, then she bought other drugs, and before you know it, she got caught. She got lucky and only had to go to rehab, but she realizes along with me, she will never fully recover from what she did. Marijuana is addictive, and it will hurt you. Thats why marijuana should remain illegal.
