Justin Rose
Staff Writer
Ever since medical marijuana has been legalized here in Oklahoma, I’ve been hearing a different type of argument against the legality of recreationally ingesting the plant.
The argument goes: while marijuana might not be as bad as some people have been saying since the beginnings of “reefer madness”, it’s still not good for society so recreational use should still be illegal.
Even though I don’t agree that marijuana would be such a drag on society, I think that it’s still a fair argument to make. It’s a sort of utilitarian argument.
I thought it would also be fair to look at alcohol through the same lens that as marijuana.
So how does alcohol affect our society? It’s no shocker that alcohol plays a large role in violent crimes.
Researchers have spent their time looking at the relationship between drugs like alcohol and crime.
The data suggest that the more you binge drink, the more the chances of you being involved in violent crime increases.
Let’s look at the individual statistics of alcohol and crime.
Of all the robberies in America, 15 percent are linked to people under the influence of alcohol.
Thirty-seven percent of all sexual assaults, including rapes, are committed by people under the influence of alcohol.
Of all the aggravated assaults that happen in this country 27 percent are caused by a person who has been drinking.
An estimated 66 percent of domestic abuses occur while the abuser is under the influence, and an estimated 40 percent of child abusers have admitted to have used alcohol during the time of the offense.
The last statistic I will mention here is the link between being under the influence of alcohol and committing a homicide.
In the United States, alcohol is involved in more homicides than other dangerous substances like heroin and cocaine.
Almost 40 percent of convicted murderers have admitted to either using alcohol before committing murder or having used alcohol during the crime.
I do realize that if alcohol was completely gone tomorrow that all these types of crimes will not go away. That is just not logical.
With that being said, I don’t think there’s any question that crime rates would go down if alcohol went away completely.
Because of this, I think it’s fair to say that our society would improve if we had a second prohibition on alcohol.
Now that we realize how our society would benefit from a new prohibition on alcohol, should we attempt to go through with it again?
My answer is the same if we replaced alcohol with marijuana in the above question: no.
We can’t allow the government to decide what we put in our bodies in our own home on our own time.
The Republican party constantly preaches about personal responsibilities.
I agree with the Republican party on this sentiment.
We need to trust the public to have the personal responsibility of deciding what mind-altering substances we can put in our bodies.