Symbols

Marijuana stands for many things that depends on how the individual "sees" the "drug". Peoples perception of marijuana may depend on many different things, from personal use or, experimentation, to a synecdoche view. Synecdoches are figures of speech in which a part is used to represent the whole. Some of our society and our government as whole see marijuana as a "bad drug", that is both bad for individuals and and for the entire U.S. population (with the exceptions of certain states allowing medicinal use). The media helps to frame marijuana as a negative substance towards society, for example, that is a gateway drug that leads to the addiction to "hard drugs". However people are basing their opinions on facts that may very well be true in some cases, but as a whole are inaccurate. According to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, in 2007, 14.4 million Americans aged 12 or older used marijuana at least once in the month. However not ever individual of those 14.4 million people are addicted to other drugs. The government and media tend to take extreme examples of cases with marijuana users and blow them out of proportion to make the public bias towards marijuana. Yet when some state governments began to sink into debt, they were quick to turn towards the idea of marijuana as revenue, not as a "bad drug".