Marijuana should be legalized

As requested, I will abstain from offering rebuttals until next round. What does legalisation of a substance do? In schools, we teach children to stay away from cannabis. In addition, we teach children to stay away from tobacco. Yet around the world, smoking rates are consistently higher for tobacco over cannabis. Why? Because after kids are told "don't do cannabis" we say "if you do cannabis, you could be arrested," while after being told "don't smoke tobacco" we say "but you are free to do so. " It's not just in our education system either. Adults who go to the store (which is pretty much all adults) are exposed to the opportunity to purchase cigarettes, but not cannabis. Indeed, if they want to buy cannabis, they need to go out of their way to find and deal with a good cannabis dealer. If we can buy cigarettes with our groceries, cigarettes become normalised. Exactly the same parallels can be drawn between cannabis and alcohol. That explains why the act of making a substance legal increases usage rates. For example, in Alaska, cannabis decriminalisation led to a rate of use among teens twice that of the US national average [1]. In Australia, a survey of young non-drug users found 29% didn't use cannabis because it was illegal. The same survey found 19% of ex-cannabis users quit because it was illegal [2]. Scarily, in Great Britain, the downgrading of the penalties for cannabis directly caused an increase in deaths from harder drugs (proving the so-called "gateway drug" effect) by a massive 15% [3]. I want to make this very clear - if cannabis was legal, more people would use it. Isn't cannabis a medicine? Recently there has been some evidence that cannabis might have some medicinal benefit, although there is no research that it actually cures anything. For each of the medicinal benefits of cannabis, however, I can point to another drug or therapy that achieves exactly the same, if not a superior, effect. In medicine, however, there is also an old principle, going back to the days of Hippocrates, called "do no harm. " That principle is not only good ethically, but part of the Hippocratic Oath that doctors take upon graduation from medical school. The practical effect is that when two remedies are available, but one has fewer side effects than the other, doctors should prescribe the one with the least side effects. I'll go into detail about the alternatives to cannabis next round, but you can see the side effects by reading about the harms to users below. A flow-on harm is that people start to self-medicate more if cannabis is seen as a legitimate alternative. For instance, marijuana is already used by many cancer patients. Not only is cannabis utterly useless compared to other drugs, but cannabis actually contains a truckload of carcinogens making the cancer worse[4] - indeed, cannabis carries 20 times the risk of lung cancer as cigarettes [5]. At one time, cannabis was also self-medicated by AIDS sufferers to ease their pain. Doctors have always known, however, that cannabis actually weakens the immune system[6]. Basically, my contention is this: cannabis is an un-necessary and ineffective medicine that comes bundled with dangerous side-effects. Besides that, increased self-medication is a very real harm for dual recreational and medical drugs. Individual harmsIn the United Kingdom alone, 30,000 people die every year of smoking cannabis [7]. In the United States there are no similar statistics, but it is a factor in at least 64,000 deaths annually [8]. If you're one of the lucky few who doesn't die, you are likely to suffer from mental illness and watch your lungs get annihilated [9], before feeling the effects of a string of cardiovascular issues [10]. The worst part - it's addictive, making it harder to change your mind [11]. In return for these long-term effects (not to mention short-term problems such as memory loss, which particularly causes young people to fail at education[12]), you temporarily lose your sense of reality somewhat. That's why 15% of teen car deaths involve marijuana [13]. After that "high" you get a "low," where you feel really bad (as if crashing your car isn't bad enough). The next time you do cannabis, your high will diminish. That leads the smoker to seek stronger drugs to regain the sense of euphoria from losing sense their of reality, multiplying the harm, and causing (in part) the gateway drug effect. That's just the start (and I may offer more next round), but to be fair to my opponent I think these 10 harms (including those cited under self medication) are enough for now. Family/FriendsCannabis smokers are sick much more often than usual [14]. As well as the harm to the economy, somebody needs to look after them. The problem is that this very same somebody will frequently have had all their hard-earned money stolen to fuel a cannabis addiction. Many communities also consider cannabis use morally reprehensible, leading to lying, deceit, families being torn apart and communities shattered. All these harms would accrue even if there was no criminal element to marijuana supply, which I deal with below. In addition, cannabis can cause users to commit crime, particularly property damage [15]. And you know how tobacco has a problem with second-hand smoke? Yeah, that happens with marijuana too. Not to mention the fact that they're going to face higher insurance charges and taxes to compensate for the greater number of cannabis users/abusers. SocietyAmsterdam is a beautiful city, home to about 7000 marijuana addicts. The law enforcement costs are causing the Dutch a deficit far above the taxes from marijuana. Over the same period that drug use worldwide fell (a 75% decrease in reported cannabis use in the USA) drug use in the Netherlands increased widely (from 30 to 300 "cannabis coffee shops")[16]. Among young people, consumption tripled [17]. Aside from the financial problem, there is also a criminal problem. As David Raynes puts it: "There is the big lie that legalising drugs will take the criminality out of supply. What nonsense. Illegal traders who pay no taxes of any sort can always undercut legitimate traders" [18]. All that was effected to stop marijuana being a gateway drug. However, Amsterdam still has more drug trafficking issues than anywhere else in Europe. For a small country, that's an appalling record. Now imagine applying all of these societal harms to a big country - like the United States - and you get the picture. Besides all that, look at all the political lawsuits, political lobbying and deep-seated corruption that exists within the cigarette industry. Do you really want a second drug industry doing that? I look forward to reading my opponent's rebuttals! Sources1 - . http://www.usdoj.gov... (PDF report)2 - . http://www.lawlink.nsw.gov.au... (PDF report)3 - . http://www.dailymail.co.uk...4 - . http://www.abovetheinfluence.com...5 - . http://www.reuters.com...6 - . http://cyber.law.harvard.edu...7 - . http://tinyurl.com...8 - . http://drugwarfacts.org...9 - . http://www.dailymail.co.uk...10- . http://en.wikipedia.org...11- . http://www.well.com...12- . http://psycnet.apa.org...13- . http://www.drugabuse.gov...14- . http://www.medic8.com...15- . http://www.sarnia.com...16- . http://www.druglibrary.org...17- . http://tinyurl.com...18- . http://www.justthinktwice.com...