The Social Issue of the War on Marijuana

              Let's talk about drugs. Not just any drug, but let's talk about marijuana. You can do a lot of things with this versatile plant. Historically it was used as hemp to make rope and clothes, but it also is smoked, eaten, and used as medicine to reduce pain or decrease seizures.  What many people do not know is that there is a war going on over this plant. This war is not fought on the battlefield on foreign soil, but here in the United States.  It is a battle that has been going on for over 50 years, do to changing attitudes of both the government and American society as a whole.

      Let’s take a step back and get a little history lesson on marijuana and why this war is going on. Marijuana comes from the hemp plant called Cannabis Sativa. If you do not know about this plant, let me tell you a little bit about it. It is most commonly nicknamed “pot” or “weed” for its dried leaves and flowers. Marijuana is so commonly known that you could go around ask anyone in the United States if they have heard about marijuana and I bet almost every single person you ask will say yes they have heard of it. Marijuana is a drug that can be smoked or eaten for its mind altering chemical called tetrahydrocannabinol or THC.  According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, this chemical alters your state of mind by altering your sense of sight, sense of time, and changes your mood. This drug also impairs your thinking and problem solving skills, as well as your memory. This is why for the longest time this drug was illegal as it gets people 'high' and if you were caught with having any amount on you, you would be charged and arrested. Depending on how the cops felt and how much marijuana you had on you, you could be sentenced to years in prison. Now you probably think, “well if it is an illegal drug then there won’t be that many arrests for it compared to other drugs.” If you think this, then I’m sorry to tell you that there are more arrests made per day for marijuana possession than any other drug in the United States. To be exact, about 52% of all drug arrests are from marijuana according to American Civil Liberties Union. This may sound great as all these people are getting arrested for doing something illegal, but what about can we say about that now in 2016 when public opinion on marijuana has changed so much?

               In 2016, twenty-six states and the District of Columbia have some type of laws that has legalized marijuana. This is happening because marijuana is also used for medical purposes. Yes, I just said that marijuana can be used for medical purposes. As of right now, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, marijuana is being used medically to reduce pain, swelling, redness, seizures, and muscle control. It is also being used to help treat cancer. From firsthand experience, I have seen what this does to a cancer patient as my girlfriends mom had breast cancer and use to take cannabis oil pills to help with the cancer treatment. She would take it to help her sleep at night as she would get hot flashes and would be waking up in pain. This is just one example on how this drug could help our medical studies and medical solutions as there are so much more to the medical treatment side of marijuana that still has yet to be found. Now how can it be right to arrest someone for using a drug that can also be a medicine?

               Let us think about that for a second. We are arresting people for the use of a drug that could potentially help them as a treatment, but because the government said this drug is illegal they are spending money and resources which could be seen as counterproductive.  Now you tell me, do you think it is okay to put a person, who may not be able to afford health care, into jail with violent offenders just because they were trying to treat themselves? I know not all people who use this drug are using it for medical issues, but what about the percentage that are. If you look at this now in 2016, we treated these people like violent criminals and sentenced them to time in prison, but many states are legalizing marijuana for recreational use. Those people who spent time in prison just for a small amount or usage of marijuana will now never get that time they spent in prison back. That could be a year or a couple of years of their life gone for something that is currently no longer illegal. You could go so far to say that it was a waste of money, man hours, and resources that could have been used elsewhere.  Also, what about those people who are still in jail right now for using marijuana? Do you think they will have to still live out their sentences? Personally, I think they will, but only for one reason, and that reason is money.

 According to drug war statistics from DrugPolicy.org says "more than $51,000,000,000 is spent annually in the U.S. on the war on drugs" (2). Now if you are like me, you saw that number and was dumbfounded at the amount of money we spend EACH year on this war on drugs! All this money is being spent because of three reasons: there are too many arrests, these arrests cost too much, and the privatization of prisons. Let’s take a look at the two pictures below from American Civil Liberties Union.

   So what this is saying is out of the 51 billion dollars of American people’s tax money, about 3.6 billion of it is wasted just for enforcing marijuana laws and every thirty-seven seconds a cop busts someone for marijuana. Doesn’t this seem to be wasting our police officers time? The police are out busting people for marijuana, when they could be using their time to saving someone’s life. Instead they want to  keep being sheep in the system and keep feeding the privatize prisons our tax money. Is a human’s life worth our tax money just for something that twenty-six states have legalized marijuana in some way? Is it worth taking away someone's loved one or friend to prison in one state but if they were in a legalized state where it would be okay? What happens to this person who went to prison for the usage of marijuana and now cannot contribute to society anymore. Now because they have this felony on their record that means nothing anymore in those states who see marijuana as legal substance. They cannot get a good job as most companies would look down upon then for this when it was merely a drug that can be used for medical purposes.  

               Some may say that it is a good idea to send them to prison because it is illegal in those few states, but what about the after affects of prison? Why incarcerate these nonviolent offenders and put them with violent offenders. All this is doing is filling the prisons and taking away room for the real people who deserve to be in this spot. This is kind of like telling child not run by the pool on one side but on the other side it is okay. you are setting a social norm of what is right and wrong when twenty-six states see this as a legal drug.  

               We all know there is a definite line between what is right and from what is wrong, but right now the whole country is split. So why don't we push to legalize marijuana in all states and just tax it like tobacco or alcohol and put an age limit on it. The government still gets our tax money, people of the right of age can still use marijuana in whatever way they need it and the police force can stop spending so much money on this drug and go after the more important things like saving someone's life. This 3.6 billion dollars spent on marijuana could be swapped and the government could be gaining this amount of money from the sales of this drug. This would also allow more medical studies happen on marijuana as more patients could be taking it more freely and not have to worry about getting arrested for this medicine they are using. Now these are my thoughts on this social issue, I would love to hear your thoughts on this as this is a current issue after the 2016 Election. I have linked my sources below for anyone to take a look and read more about this issue.

 My sources:

https://www.aclu.org/gallery/marijuana-arrests-numbers

http://www.drugpolicy.org/drug-war-statistics

https://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/drugfacts/marijuana-medicine

My Civic Engagement Experience

       While on Thanksgiving break, my best friend Jackson invited me to attend a Sunday morning mass at Immaculate Conception Catholic church. For my first time going to a church, I wanted to go with a friend who I felt comfortable with talking about it and be able to deal with me questioning it as I have never really been to a mass before as my family is not all that religious and do not go to church. So I decided to give it a try and be open minded to what goes on in a Sunday morning mass at a Catholic church and what my friend believes in. To someone new going to a Sunday morning mass, this was a little overwhelming at first when I did not know how to take it all in. I did not want to be disrespectful and ask questions on what was going on and why but while listening and just observing the families all here for this mass, I couldn't but help be nervous as I was an outsider to all of this and not knowing what was going on. I felt really strange and awkward here as I felt really out of place as I believe in something different than all the people here. It was however,  neat to see how this community comes together and listens and sings as one to something they believe in. When people were singing, I could just see the joy it brought to the ones who actually enjoyed being there and what they believed in. After a while of listening and singing from different versus' from the bible, the priest started to talk about the life lesson message of the day called the Gospel.  This Gospel for this Sunday was LK 23:35-43. This story was very eye opening to me. This Gospel, opened my eyes a little and actually gave me a life lesson. The lesson I took from it was that you need to be willing to accept the consequences for your actions as it was your action and no someone else's.  The Gospel kind of opened my mind to this religion of why everyone here, in my eyes, come to church and believe in this religion.  This gives them a reason to the question to 'why?' that us humans always question.  I take it as a reason to knowing the unknown forces that affect us each day. Close to the end of the mass, we all walked up to receive holy bread and wine that was blessed by the priest. This was where I felt really uncomfortable as an outsider as everyone accepted the bread and wine but my friend told me I could not receive this. I could not accept the bread and wine as I was never baptized or what my friend said was "blessed as a child."  
What I took out of this experience was that it gives people a purpose and sense of reason to what the unknown is. This is important to this community as it can help them make the 'right' decisions in their mind. This is important as it gives everyone a sense of belonging as everyone here believes in the same thing. I believe this is how it must be for other churches with different religions. 

Understanding the separation of race within major cities

Today many people do not see that there still is a separation of race in communities. This problem is not noticed because it is not shown on the news or on Facebook, unless you live in these communities. For me personally, I never really thought the separation was as bad as it is today. I live in a small town in Michigan called Fowlerville. It is a small farming community and everyone who lives in this community are all separated by farm fields but not by race. If you take a look at the picture shown below it will show what I am talking about. It shows that majority of the community is 'white' but the other races are just mixed within and there is no divided line between races. I kind of feel like this how most small towns are. In the second picture, you can see from the neighboring communities around Fowerlville. In these neighboring communities, you cannot really see a divided line between races in these communities. Before I started looking deeper into this subject, I did not think there would be a big separation of race within a town or city. Maybe it is because I did not grow up around a separated community and it made me miss or ignore this separation when I went to a major city. 

Picture 1, Zoomed in picture of my community in Fowlerville, Michigan.

Picture 2, Zoomed out picture of neighboring communities/towns around Fowlerville.

 In the third picture below, you can see the major city of Detroit. As you can see, there is a big separation of race within the major city of Detroit. You can see that there are patches of different races within this one city and there are big divided lines between the different races. You can see that the Hispanic community have their own patch on the lower part of the city and the Black community is the majority of the city but stops around 8 mile road where there is a divided line between  the white and black community.

Picture 3, Detroit Michigan and its separated community

With these pictures taken from the 2010 US block data. You now can see that there still is a separation of race within communities in the cities and you can see this throughout the US in all of its major cities. But what brings this separation? Let's compare the income between the communities of Fowlerville and Detroit Michigan. In the two pictures below from Data USA, you can see the household income in each community. As you can see the median household income for Fowlerville is around 44k and for Detroit it is around 25k. Just taking a glance at these two different incomes, you can see that Fowlerville's income per household is kind of spread out between different incomes. Now if you take a look at Detroit's income, you can see that the majority of its households are in the 10k range. 

Picture 4, Bar graph of the income per household in Fowlerville Michigan

Picture 5, Bar graph of the income per household in Detroit Michigan 

Could this be the reason of why there are big separation of race? Could this difference in incomes be the reason of separation of race? After seeing this, I believe that the household income does have some factor into this separation of race. As Fowlerville's income range is kind of spread out throughout the community and not just one major percent makes up the whole community unlike Detroit. With that big of a separation of income, you will get some people who move into the same income community and I figure that is where the separation comes from. The separation of wanting to live with the community of same income. For instance, a rich person would not want to live near burnt down buildings. They would move into a community of same income. These are just my thoughts on this subject but what is your thoughts after seeing this?

Breaking the Social Norm

In today’s culture, we have various norms that are specific to a type of gender but who wrote these norms? Who wrote that males couldn’t wear a skirt or couldn’t wear makeup? These norms are not written down anywhere but they are socially written in our society. Now what will happen if you break these social norms? Take the one of the norms, let’s say the norm of it is okay for a girl to wear yoga pants or leggings in public but not a guy, and put them in a public place and see what happens. Instead of just having this guy just stand in public, let’s have him do something that he would do like it was just a normal day like grocery shopping. A group of friends and I decided to do this exact experiment, to have one of us, a guy, wear yoga pants while grocery shopping, and see what other people’s reactions would be.

                                                       THE EXPERIMENT

Our friend Jake volunteered to be our genie pig for this social experiment. He got some yoga pants and we decided to go to Walmart right around when most people would be getting off work, so around five O’clock in the afternoon. We thought grocery shopping was an everyday activity that while your shopping you pass many people throughout the store. This is why we wanted to go around five O’clock as we wanted as many people to be at the store. When we got to the store our friend got a cart just like he would do usually and just start walking around shopping. The rest of the group just acted like we were shopping as well but was really watching and listening to other people as our friend walked by. We followed our friend around Walmart for about an hour or more and we were not surprised of the results.

                                                       THE RESULTS

The results of this experiment was not surprising to us. As Jake walked around the store, he felt very uncomfortable as he felt more exposed than he usually would be shopping and that he felt people were staring at him. He had a right to feel this way about people as the group observed that as he passed by people they gave him weird and disgusting looks. Sometimes, people would eve laugh or even whisper to the person they are with about Jake. Now what makes these people think that it is weird for a guy to be wearing this? It all comes from our society. In our society, a guy has to wear ‘boy’ colors and clothing, while a girl has to wear ‘girl’ colors and clothing. If you take a step back and look deeply into everyday things, you will see that this norm is in everything. For example, take a look at two different big hit music videos; Justin Bieber “Boyfriend” and “Call me Maybe” by Carly Jepsen. These two big hit music videos are different in some ways but also very similar through the gender norm of guy must do manly things and a girl must do girly things. In “Call me Maybe” right away you have a girl looking out the window looking at a guy who is trying to start a lawnmower while she’s inside reading romantic novels. Now what happens if it was the other way around? The girl outside doing the “manly” thing of mowing the grass and the guy reading a romantic novel. Do you think this music video would have gotten over 800 MILLION! Views? I don’t think so. Now move forward to Justin Bieber’s big hit music video of “Boyfriend.” Same thing with “Call me Maybe,” right away not even a minute in you have Justin Bieber driving around in a muscle car. He is showing that he is manly for driving these cars and doing a manly thing. Now what if it was the girl who drove up to him in these cars? This just shows you that this norm is placed everywhere in our life. It starts from the time we are very young and watching cartoons to mid-aged adults watching music videos and continues throughout our life. This norm restricts our personality from a young age with this concept of what is acceptable and what is not. Now when you are just walking through the store or driving around, try to take a step back and look to see if you can see this social norm being placed out there.

Boys & Girls Forced Into Early Social Roles

         "Happy wife, happy life," seems to be a social norm adopted in western culture and instilled in youth from a very young age. This is the surface of an excessive emphasis on the importance of men treating woman with the utmost respect, maintaining gender values in our culture. However, from a personal experience and witnessing this in person, it is my opinion that emphasizing these values can be damaging to the roles men and women take in adolescence and adulthood.

         Remembering grade school, I recall a constant push for boys to hold girls to a higher standard and level of respect for no other reason other than the fact that "they are girls." Early in elementary school, boys and girls were even separated during gym classes out of concern that girls' aggression did not match that of the boys. These protocols, taken without giving children any real reason other than their known gender, I believe caused myself and many other young boys to develop a superiority complex towards woman. Additionally, this automatically caused young girls to self label themselves as inferiors. In dramatic cases, from my own experience, girls grew into resorting to their gender to escape confronting some of their problems. I even recall extreme cases, where girls partook in bullying boys, only to hide behind their socialized gender, a girl. This goes both ways, as boys resorted their gender to being inalienably more powerful than girls, which in reality neither genders have physically matured before the 3rd grade.  

        What a child learns in these early stages of development is crucial to the social roles they take as adults. This I believe contributes to the tense divide of sexes we constantly see in today's culture. I personally feel that I have been forced into the typical social role of a "male," having small traces of assumed superiority over women for no reason other than the role of my un-earned gender. While at the same time,  Woman have victimized themselves at all ages in situations that they are perfectly capable of facing themselves. We just assume ourselves to these roles because we were given them from birth; something I and many men and women in my generation are guilty of.

         My argument is not to deem boys and girls equal on all levels, because they are not. Boys are biologically different from girls. However, this does not mean they are to be treated differently and  deserve pre-determined social roles. At a young age, if treated as equals, boys and girls will take on their own social roles and a healthier dynamic will be established between the two genders, helping fill the social divide. It is important that boys are no longer arbitrarily required to walk on egg shells around girls and treat them with an overwhelming amount of respect, but rather watch what they say around all people and treat everyone with respect. More specifically, before the third grade, boys and girls should partake in the same gym classes and not be segregated in academic and extracurricular subjects. This will teach girls from a young age that they are not confined to a specific type of activities that their social roles allow. The larger mix of genders in these activities will have the potential to expose our world to what women may contribute to male dominated areas and what men may contribute to female dominated areas.

         These educational procedures obviously cannot last forever, as girls and boys will develop physically and emotionally and will no longer take the same social role. However, if they begin their lives on the same playing field, the social roles they do grow up and take will be healthier for the overall relationship between both genders. We will see less of a gender imbalance in STEM subjects, extracurricular such as dance or contact sports, and career paths like military or law enforcement. Starting both genders from the same social placement, will allow for a healthier, unforced path to the roles they take as adults. 

The Giving Tree with gender roles

               The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein is a children's book that was published in 1964 by Harper & Row. For those who have not read this book, the book tells a story about a boy who comes and visits his favorite tree that gives him whatever he wants from her leaves to even her branches. The story goes on as the boy grows older and starts to ask for more and more from her. At the end of the story, the tree has given all of what she can offer to the boy who is now an old man. She is nothing but a stump now and which can only offer a sitting place for this old man. This makes him happy as he doesn't need much and wishes just for a nice place to sit and rest. This makes the tree happy to give this last wish to the old man as he sits down on the stump.

                The Giving Tree socializes children in many different ways This blog will be focusing on the aspect family roles and also gender roles throughout this book. At first glance, this book seems like a harmless book to children. On the other hand, it inputs many different social views during this time into their brains. The "tree" in this book is given a gender of a women who is willing to give anything for this little boys happiness. This can be portrayed as a mother giving anything to her son for his happiness even if it breaks her. Shel Silverstein could of had the tree be genderless and made it up to the reader to make a gender for this tree or make it a magical tree. But during this time period, it was known for the women in the family to give everything up and stay home to be a housewife. This means to do anything to make the husband and kids happy. The Giving Tree shows this when the boy started to older and leave the tree alone until he needed something. It is portrayed as the husband leaving for work and leaving the wife home alone and when he returns to have dinner waiting for him to feast on.

               Another way this book socializes children on the way the author portrayed gender roles throughout the book. The way this is portrayed is that if the boy is happy then the girl in the relationship should be happy as well. This can be shown throughout the entire book as the boy is selfish and never asks what the tree wants but is always happy when she makes the boy happy even if it means giving him her whole trunk for a boat. This gives the little girl's the thought that her happiness is only given when she makes a boy's wishes to come true. On the other hand, this thought process gives the boys that his girlfriend or wife will do anything for their happiness and that it is okay to be selfish.

               After really looking through this children's book and reading in-depth into the meaning behind each word, this has changed my whole outlook on this book now. This has created a very sad story for me when I remembered it being so happy and looked reading about it when I was a child. I now see how back then it was acceptable for the women in the family to be a stay at home mom and to just please the men in the house as it was imbedded in their thoughts from young children by books like this one. Children books now would never have anything like this as in today's society.

Unemployment

     For this blog, I will be discussing my opinion and thoughts on the unemployment rates of parents in the following states, Michigan, Minnesota, and Maryland. The data tables I used to display the rates of unemployment were found on the Website, Kids Count Data Center.

     The unemployment rates not just through these three states but throughout the United States as a whole have always been a growing issue. A key concern with these rates are not the rates of the youth but the rates of the unemployed parents.  The question is what causes these unemployment rates to increase and what is the after math of the parents unemployment. The tables below show the rates of  unemployed parents in Michigan, Minnesota, and Maryland between the years 2008 and 2012.

Table 1: Michigan's Parent Unemployment Rate

Table 2: Minnesota's Parent Unemployment Rate

Table 3: Maryland's Parent Unemployment Rate

     As can be seen, between these three states, Michigan has the highest number if unemployed parents within the given time frame.  This could be the result of the crash of the big three automotive companies in which Michigan's economy is centered around. All three automotive companies, Ford, GM, FCA, declared bankruptcy and had to lay off thousands of people which increased these rates during this time. The unemployment in Michigan peaked in 2009 with 198,000 parents out of a job. This could be a single parent or it could be both parents. Another cause of this is just the huge economy crash that happed during this time as well. It can also be seen  that Minnesota and Maryland were affected by this economy crash from 2008 to 2010. With these three states both being affected by the economic crash occurring in 2008, one could assume that the rest of the United States also saw a large negative impact. Within this economy crash, many companies also failed. For example, Chrysler used to be its own company and was a huge competitor with Ford and GM until they went under and were bought out by Fiat. Now they are no longer named Chrysler, it is FCA or Fiat Chrysler Automobiles.  This merging of companies means that some people were probably laid off and new people were brought in from the company who bought the other out.

     With all this going on for the parents, what are the after math effects on being unemployed for their families or social life? With a parent or parents being laid off or unemployed, one can anticipate dramatic lifestyle changes for their families as they will not be able to do the things they were able to do before as they will have less of an income. Another obstacle this brings to the parents being able to find employment along side of  thousands of other unemployed parents competing for the same job. One question ripe for exploration, does this affect family affairs as well? With the stressful times of being unemployed it will be easy for the unemployed parents to take out their stress on their loved ones and or their friends.

   This is just some food for thought and how I feel about this subject as it is still a current growing issue.