On many different levels, one of the largest and most controversial issues of today is the legalization of marijuana. Marijuana has played an immense role in the transformation of our nation. The conflicting issue of marijuana legalization spans a large majority of our country’s citizens, from America’s government all the way down to the common man. Marijuana has been purposely brushed out of the picture by our government to promote other products such as nylon and paper, products that are manufactured by large industries with the ability to grease our leader’s palms. Personally, I disagree with the idea of making a substance illegal on the basis of promoting other products in competition or simply because of personal preference without consulting the majority of a democracy.Conveyed to me by my Uncle G. in south Florida, the issue of making marijuana illegal all began with one newspaper publisher’s thought of losing money. According to Oxford University Press, Randolph Hearst, considered to be “the newspaper publisher of the early twentieth century,” had just purchased four hundred thousand acres of limber land in the Mexican forest for trees to use in the production of his newspapers. Finding that hemp was easier to grow and that it grew much faster without the necessity of commercial fertilizers or pesticides, Mr. Hearst was forced to reassess his assets. He knew that he had to find a way of taking hemp off the market so it wouldn’t interfere with his production of paper. This task was easy for Mr. Hearst; being one in a position to control the media, he simply told the government and public of an “evil drug” called marijuana being imported from Mexico, saying that it was corrupting and killing America’s youth. The term “marijuana” in the Spanish dialect means as the Americans call it, “hemp”, but at the time Americans were led to believe marijuana...
