The legalization of marijuana: Scientific, legal and ethical dilemmas

DESPITE the fact that it has its application both in industry and medicine, precisely because of its psychoactive nature, cannabis is, in the majority of world countries, on the list of prohibited substances, and accordingly its cultivation and usage is legally punishable. According to the data given in the World Report on Drugs for 2016, developed by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, cannabis is the world’s leading illegal substance in terms of breeding, production, resale and number of users. Bearing in mind the different attitudes regarding the use, effects, and in general the legality and legitimacy of using cannabis, and the fact that the reactions to marijuana are individual, the paper analyzes scientific, legal and ethical dilemmas in this area. Without giving any primacy neither to the legalization, nor to the attitude against the legalization of marijuana, it is unquestionable to support the view that the prohibition of something (in this case marijuana), which has widely been used illegally for a long time, entails a series of bad effects that might successfully be prevented with a controlled legalized usage or consumption