Diversity Event: Is the War on Drugs Helping or Harming?

    For my diversity event, I attended Is the War on Drugs Helping or Harming? Before this lecture, I was somewhat oblivious to the world of drugs and the huge debate surrounding it. I came from a high school where a lot of people did use drugs, and coming to college I realized that many people use here as well.
    The first speaker for the lecture was a professor I believe (I didn't catch his name!). He talked about marijuana, or cannabis. He said that the compounds in cannabis, known as cannabinoids, have different effects on people. Some of the medical benefits he talked about were relieving pain for cancer or AIDS patients, suppressing cancer cells, lowering pain and pressure for glaucoma, working as an antiemetic (stops vomiting) and promotes hunger for sick patients who have stopped eating to prevent them from getting weaker. The speaker also addressed the behavioral and cognitive effects cannabis has. It affects our perception, such as how we decode things and our senses. It especially affects our time perception, as the feeling of time passes more slowly using cannabis, and reduces our reaction time much like alcohol. Our memory is also disorganized, and people will forget what they are talking about. It affects our performance, even doing everyday tasks like driving a car, which could be dangerous for society.
    The next speaker was Brian Leininger, an attorney who is a member of LEAP (Law Enforcement Against Prohibition). He opposes the war on drugs and wants all drugs to be legalized and regulated. He explained that billions of dollars and thousands of police are used to to arrest people with drugs. He believes that be legalizing drugs, that money and police could go towards other things, such as crimes with actual victims. He also said that with drug legalization, the black market selling drugs would be eliminated, drug related murders and rapes would be decreased and people addicted to drugs would have to rob and sell stolen items to pay for such high drug prices. He said that many lives have been ruined because of the amount of drug convicts in prison, and although people would still abuse drugs, it would eliminate a lot of the problems. Some interesting facts he said were that the last few presidents have used marijuana, and in a nationwide poll, 58% of the US were for legalizing marijuana. He also believes that Missouri will soon legalize marijuana, and other Midwestern states will follow suit. 
    I found this lecture to be very informative and interesting. I couldn't believe that an attorney was actually FOR making all drugs legal! I do think he made some very good points, and he was very convincing. However, I still don't believe all drugs should be legal. People will still use drugs no matter what, but once you legalize dangerous drugs, what else will be next? Who knows what trouble that could lead to, and what potential harm to our country and citizens it could create. I do think however, after hearing this lecture, that legalizing marijuana would not be terrible. They said that alcohol is far more dangerous than marijuana, yet it is legal and marijuana is not. I think that as long as people are smart about it, it would be okay. I'm mostly for it because Colorado's and Washington's economy has vastly profited since they decided to legalize, so I think that it could benefit Iowa's economy as well.