Future President

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue

Washington, D.C. 20500

If you’re reading this letter, then that means you’ve probably read hundreds of others like it from hundreds of different English students. Now, I’m not one of the most powerful people in the world, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t consider the issue that this letters is addressing.

The problem with marijuana’s illicitness is that it guarantees a high profitability to anybody who has the will to sell it, and those dealers usually aren’t adverse to selling their product to children as long as they get paid, whereas a licensed store would ensure that the person buying from them is a certain age. Currently, marijuana is listed as a schedule I drug, the highest a drug can be listed, meaning that the DEA doesn’t recognize it as a substance containing any medicinal benefits. Cocaine and crystal meth are only listed as a schedule II drug--but that’s beside the point. If marijuana doesn’t possess any medical benefits, then why have 25 states legalized its medicinal use as of June 2016?

If I’m writing to President Trump, in 1990, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune had you on record stating that you thought that US drug enforcement was “a joke.” You also said that all drugs should be legalized to take money away from the “drug czars,” which would include marijuana, of course.

If I’m writing to President Clinton, you said in an April 21 interview on Good Morning America that you wanted to move marijuana from schedule I, which is a step in the right direction, but the ultimate goal should be the deschedulization of the drug as a whole. Having marijuana descheduled could replace black market distribution with a legal, legitimate, and overseen industry. Not only that, but the poorer states would make billions of dollars just by the taxation and regulation of marijuana, like alcohol.

There are a lot of holes in the arguments for keeping marijuana as an illegal substance. Marijuana itself is not illegal to smoke, it is, however, illegal to have in your possession. There are also more harmful drugs out there that are completely legal after you’ve reached a certain age. Cigarettes are addictive and can kill you, but marijuana won’t. Alcohol is addictive, too, yet it is completely legal to purchase it in the United States once the consumer is 21.

The illegality of marijuana isn’t stopping anyone from smoking it, if they want to, they will. If people want to sell it illegally, possibly to children, and make a huge profit on it, they will. Shouldn’t that stop? With the deschedulization and government overseen industry of marijuana, it would. I’m not going to lie and say that it would stop it completely, kids can still reach into their dad’s liquor cabinet and snatch a pack of cigarettes from their mom’s purse, but it would be a start. Please consider reaching out to the DEA for the deschedulization of marijuana during your presidency.

Keep on presidenting, 

Alex