Malta - Legalization of Marijuana

Marijuana, one of the safest substances on earth, with no recorded death in the history of mankind. Yes it has some negative impact, but only if people use it carelessly. Like anything else too much of something isn't good. Some negatives of heavy users are :

- short term memory loss
- laziness
- apathy and careless
- sleepy/drowsiness
- causes heart to speed up (which could cause heart attacks if a person suffers from serious heart issues)
- can cause one's sex drive to go down
- anxiety, panic or paranoia (of being caught)
- nicotine addiction (when using tobacco that contains nicotine to roll)
- inability to understand things as fast as normal

There are some other negative side effects for heavy users that smoke Marijuana alot. Despite all this, Marijuana cannot kill you (unless you suffer with serious heart or lung conditions, in which case the condition will kill you because of it ) as the lethal 'overdose' intake for Marijuana would need to be ~650kg in roughly 15 minutes which is humanely impossible. To give you an idea, if a person was to put 0.5g of Marijuana into a 'joint', one would need to smoke 1,300,000 joints in 15 minutes, and even than, it's not the THC that would kill you, but rather the lack of oxygen in your lungs. So much so, that a simple peanut has a higher death rate per year than Marijuana.

So what are it's actual medical benefits? Here's a list of some medical illnesses it helps to threat :

- muscles pain
- multiple sclerosis
- nerve pain
- arthritis pain
- lack of apetite
- epilepsy
- chronic pain
- headaches and migraine
- chrons disease
- halts / slows down cancer
- Parkinson
- Alzheimers
- stress
- post traumatic stress disorder
- glaucoma
- weight loss
- lupus
- nausea

Impressive isn't it? Best of all, it's naturaly grown, can be grown in any garden and can help replace actual prescription drugs and save money.

Speaking of money, let's go through some benefits of business across the Maltese islands.

Tourism is one of the biggest markets in Malta, without a doubt, I myself work with tourists and it's unbelievable how many ask me 'is weed legal here?' and they are disappointed when they find out that it's not legal. So how's this help tourism?

Let's look at Amsterdam, the weed capital of Europe. Amsterdam alone makes ~250-500 million euros a year on just weed TAX, people from all around the world flock to Amsterdam for a legal smoke and hotels, resorts, restaurants and bars charge more due to higher tourism and demands and therefore make more profit (much like San giljan or sliema). Now, malta is not the same size of Amsterdam obviously, but working with a bit of estimates.

Every year in Malta, 1 million or so tourists visit, now say 5% of said tourists smoke, and we applied the standard 18% malta tax rate and say every tourist was charged the standard street price of 20 euro per gram, that would be 200,000 euros a year in tax, and that's just saying malta not being 'advertised' as a country that sells Marijuana.

Now say it was legalized and people across the world find out, we're in the Centre of Europe and Africa and have tourists coming here from every end of the world, now say we get for arguments sake 500,000 Marijuana tourists a year here, same thing, the estimate street price of 20 euro per gram and apply the 18% standard tax, and you have yourself 1.8 million on taxes per year on weed, not to forget to mention about all the bars, kiosks, souvenir shops, restaurants, Maltese airline and all other tourist outlets that benefit from the increase of tourism in Malta and increase jobs for malta.

Still not convinced at the benefits this simple natural plant brings?

Marijuana has 2 parts, just like any other plant, there is the female and the male. The female plant is where we get 'weed' from, the smoke able type that contains THC and grants all these benefits. The male however is not smoke able but it is far from useless. The male counterpart is called 'hemp'. So what can you make with hemp? Well you should be asking 'what can't you make with it'. Not to go into too much detail, here are some Hemp uses :

- it can substitute wood
- turned into paper
- can make biofuel for cars or energy
- lotions and oils
- can be used to build hoses
- can made rope and fiber
- clothing
- you can cook with it (applies to the female plant also)
- compost
- soap and disinfectants

The list could go on forever, but in short, Hemp can be turned into almost everything you can think of .

So it's safer than any legalized substance like alcohol and cigarettes, it has never killed a person in the history of mankind, it can replace alot of prescription drugs, the male Hemp plant has an abundant amount of uses and it could make Malta's tourism flourish like never before, and best of yet it can be grown by any one, so why is it illegal? Why should a natural plant be treated so illegaly?

Crime would also drop, as the majority, if not all, dealers would stop selling illegal Marijuana and harsher penalties could be added for people caught selling illegally if such laws came into play. Furthermore, police could put their resources to finding people who use real, harsher drugs and therefore crime rate would drop as result.

So I ask you brothers and sisters, do you stand together to help reform the way malta view Marijuana? Or will you sit there idle and do nothing? In the end of the day, legalized or not, people will still smoke Marijuana, it's just a matter of whether or not Malta will be smart and actually benefit from it or not.

Thank you for reading and for your support.