Should Marijuana Be Legalized The legalization of marijuana has been a hot topic for several years in the United States. Those opposed to the legalization say that marijuana is addictive, leads to harder drug use and increases criminal behavior. The use of marijuana for medicinal purposes dates back to as early as 2737 B.C., where Chinese Emperor Shen Neng would prescribe marijuana tea for treatment of a variety of ailments (Stack, Suddath, 2009). Research shows that marijuana should be legalized in the United States because of the amount of money we are spending trying to prevent its use and lost income not collecting taxes, it is beneficial for medicinal purposes, and U.S. citizens want it to be legal. Each year in the United States a large amount of resources is spent policing, prosecuting and jailing people for marijuana offenses. In 2010 New York City spent approximately $75 million for the arrest and prosecution of people for small amounts of marijuana (Levine, Siegal, 2011). That is money that could be spent elsewhere on programs that really needed it. The $75 million dollars could have easily been spent to help with the cities homeless problem, or be spent to strengthen the cities schools. Statistics show that from 2009 to 2010 the rate of murder, rape, assault and robbery went up in New York City (city-data, 2014). The man hours used catching and arresting people for marijuana could have been used to help prevent some of these crimes. Jeffrey Miron a economics professor at Harvard University says ‘legalizing marijuana would save $7.7 billion per year in government expenditure on enforcement of prohibition’(2006). With governments at a local, state and federal level operating in a huge deficit each year the money saved from legalizing marijuana would surely help the budgets. With rising medicaid cost and the large amount of money spent on protecting