Right after they announced that marijuana legalization was passed in Chicago, IL, and across the state, we began seeing those old advertisements about this is your brain on drugs.
One of my favorite advertisements announced that you needed to protect your brain.
I knew it wasn’t safe for younger people to use marijuana unless it was medical marijuana and then it had to be closely monitored. I wonder if I was the only one who understood this, or if the government thought the citizens of IL were ignorant. The Protect Your Brain advertisement went into detail about what marijuana does to the undeveloped brain. It talked about how the brain continues to develop until the age of twenty-five. Studies showed that cannabis use in young people can impair brain development. The ad stressed that cannabis use by young people, more noteably heavy cannabis use can impair short term memory, learning ability and intelligence. The last statement in the advertisement was that the purchase and use of cannabis by anyone under the age of twenty-one, is illegal. What happened to the brain continues to develop until the age of 25. If the Chicago, IL government knew these facts, why didn’t they make purchasing and use of marijuana under the age of 25 illegal? I think the legalization of marijuana, especially medical marijuana is a good thing, but I wonder about the lawmakers. Did they read all the information about its safety before setting the law about age? If they had, legal marijuana in Illinois could have been different than they are now. I’m sure they would have heard a lot of angry people yelling about using alcohol at 21 but not marijuana, but they don’t know all the facts.