Cathrine Forde-This beautiful green plant has been around dating all the way back to 2727 B.C. From all of the multiple uses it holds such as beneficial medical use, providing an organic material for clothing, as well as having hemp lotions and shampoos on the market, it helps both people’s personal needs as well as the environment. While this plant has more positive qualities that outweigh the negative ones, it is still a controversial topic. On a site called healthline, ome people that are mostly older believe that if you smoke marijuana, the chances of opening a gateway to other drug use is likely. Over the past decade, the support of legalizing marijuana has gone from 30 to 60 percent. While it may seem like most people support it, most of the people who voted in favor meant that it should be used strictly for ill people who rely on it. The website also stated that many also argued that the consumption of alcohol is far worse than smoking pot, which I find incredibly true. I feel that if a substance has no negative proof on it, anyone should be free to put it into their bodies. Currently there are nine states that support the recreational use including Massachusetts, Alaska, California, Colorado, Maine, Nevada, Oregon and Vermont. Surprisingly, Oregon was the very first state to legalize weed in 1973, but only for medical purposes according to healthland.time.com. In 2012, Colorado and Washington became the first to to legalize cannabis for individuals to use it recreationally. While it may seem that everyone is free to consume as much marijuana they desire, it is still not passed as a Federal Law in Massachusetts. This means that whatever a person chooses to do in their own personal time on their property is their own business, but opening up a dispensary is tricky due to the possible threat of them being shut down federally. According to the Boston News, more than a half-dozen dispensaries that are currently supplying cannabis for medical use are in the process of making it recreational. There will actually be one opening pretty locally in the future in Leicester, MA. This store received the state’s first recreational license and will be opening very soon near autumn. According to the Worcester Telegram, the town of Sutton has put a ban on all retail establishments, but allow people the option to partake in the process in their own homes. There is a slight chance that people in Sutton could set up their own business, but they would need a special permit in order to do that. Jim Robins, a town planner in Westborough, MA stated, “We decided that in order to protect the welfare of the community and do what we felt was the most harm, that we would ban it.” According to the WBJournal website, both the towns of Sutton and Westborough were the ones to take the most drastic steps on the matter itself. No matter where any individual's opinion towards the use of cannabis may stand, it is something that comes from nature and to this day continues to be used in numerous ways in society.
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