Today we live in a society where challenging the wrong &
doing the right is what every individual strives for. But who decides what is
wrong & what is right. If you accept it, its right & if you don’t, is
it wrong? How can we come to a conclusion when we are ourselves confused with
the right & when we are doing wrong.
IS SMOKING MARIJUANA WRONG?
I would say NO….why? Cuz I have smoked it many times &
find it very much relaxing. But if this same questions are asked to a non
smoker, he/she will say YES…why: Cuz he/she can live without smoking it &
also has the government backing them by prohibiting it. But why is it banned??
When there are even more harsher substances that can create problems in your
body, why is this particular plant banned almost everywhere in this world. To
get an answer for this we will have to travel back to 1913.
In the early 1900’s, just after the Mexican Revolution, was
the influx of immigration from Mexico into states like Texas and Louisiana. Not
surprising, these new Americans brought with them their native language,
culture and customs. One of these customs was the use of cannabis as a medicine
and relaxant.Mexican immigrants referred to this plant as “marihuana”. While
Americans were very familiar with “cannabis” because it was present in almost
all tinctures and medicines available at the time, the word “marihuana” was a
foreign term. So, when the media began to play on the fears that the public had
about these new citizens by falsely spreading claims about the “disruptive
Mexicans” with their dangerous native behaviors including marihuana use, the
rest of the nation did not know that this “marihuana” was a plant they already
had in their medicine cabinets.The demonization of the cannabis plant was an
extension of the demonization of the Mexican immigrants in an effort to control
and keep tabs on these new citizens. This method of
controlling people by controlling their customs was quite successful, so much
so that it became a national strategy for keeping certain populations under the
watch and control of the government.I will tell you a small story behind this
whole criminalizing the use of marijuana. Once there was rich man who owned a
paper mill in the US. This is even before the world wars. He was very unhappy
with people using hemp based products. As hemp was cheap & the hemp papers
where easily available, his business was not performing well. Any guesses, what
he did? He called up all his big shot friends, few from his industry & few
from the government & asked them to stop people from using the hemp paper. The
result of which you can feel it right now. Also earlier, when the classism was
on its peak, if a black person steps on the white person’s shadow, he was
sentenced to prison. The population of Blacks smoking marijuana was more in the
US. Can you now get the co-relation??This became the backdrop for the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937 which effectively banned its
use and sales.
The scene in India was completely different. While most of
the states in the US had banned all narcotic drugs by the '40s, India had a
more pragmatic approach since its colonial days: its restrictions were focused
on harder substances like opium. The Indian hemp drug commission appointed in
1893, far from finding it addictive, hailed cannabis for the "mild
euphoria" and "pleasant relaxation" caused by it.For 25 years
since 1961, it has withstood American pressure to keep marijuana legal.Since
1961, the US has been campaigning for a global law against all drugs, both hard
and soft. Given that ganja, charas and bhang were a way of life in India, we
opposed the drastic measure. But by the early '80s, American society was
grappling with some drug problems and opinion had grown against the
"excesses" of the hippie generation. In 1985, the Rajiv Gandhi
government buckled under the pressure and enacted a law called the Narcotic
Drugs & Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act
IS MAKING IT ILLEGAL THE RIGHT WAY?
It was a poor law that clubbed marijuana, hashish and bhang
with hard drugs like smack, heroin, cocaine and crack, and banned them all. The
minimum punishment for violation of the NDPS Act was 10 years of jail (it has
since been relaxed and the crackdown on marijuana has eased somewhat). What
happened as a result of this law was that almost overnight the entire trade
shifted from peddling grass or charas to smack or worse. This was because
while the risk was the same, profits from the hard-killer drugs were ten times
higher. And suddenly, there was a drugs problem in India. In cities like Delhi,
for instance, smack addiction grew. The addicts were mostly poor people - those
who had earlier smoked grass were now 'chasing' smack. The poorly
thought-out NDPS Act had actually created a drugs problem where there was none.
Given that studies across the world show that moderate consumption of
marijuana is far less harmful than tobacco or alcohol, it makes little sense to
uphold the ban on its recreational use. Marijuana also has medical benefits
which include its analgesic and pleasant mood altering effects that it has.
Think about this, people say marijuana is a gateway drug…It can lead to people
using hard drugs. But if one can smoke marijuana legally, do you really think
they will even want to try any other drug? Even if they try it, as its not
legal, they would not use it on a regular basis. The problem with the current
law is that it puts soft as well as hard drugs in the same category making it
look equally dangerous. From the perspective of the person who is addicted to
hard drugs, the legal outcome of even marijuana is same. So then why to stick
with marijuana & not go for harder drugs? Addiction always depends on
person to person. Research has proved that marijuana does not contain any special
addictive substances. It just gives you a temporary relaxing feeling which doesn’t
have any side effects once you stop using it.
Frankly there is not scientific reason behind making
marijuana illegal. Its is just because it can easily grow anywhere that the government
wants to have an upper hand in the issue. Today the states which have legalized
the recreational use of marijuana is collecting high amount of tax from it.
It has made their government rich &
also have opened employment opportunities. I do agree that excessive
consumption will effect one’s body, but isn’t it the case with everything.
Excess of water is also bad for the body…So does it means that we should have a
law for the same? It should be left to the perception of an individual to
decide what is right & what is wrong. From experience I can only say that
if you ask a human to not do it….that person will be more interested in doing
it. The Ying & Yang of our soul will always play their parts very well.
Hence it’s important to tackle the problem rather than just avoiding it.
There are many more facts which I would like to bring in
front of you….Keep in touch!!
