Legalization of Marijuana

Rebuttals to Points 1 and 4 Your assertions that marijuana can cause permanent brain cell loss and that it can alter brain chemicals, regardless of their accuracy, are irrelevant to this debate. For one thing, both of these assertions are true for plenty of other legal things, perhaps most notably alcohol. [1] People are going to do risky things like consume alcohol and marijuana, and it is not the government's role to protect people from themselves and what they choose willingly to put into their own bodies. If it was, we would have to succumb to outright authoritarianism, where the government could dictate how we ate, drank, slept, etc. to Point 2 Driving under the influence of alcohol and marijuana are both illegal. If your solution to the problem of people driving under the influence is to ban the substance(s) they are using, then you would have to ban alcohol as well, and we both know that alcohol prohibition caused gang violence & murder (the Al Capones) and didn't stop people from drinking. To Point 3 A study by the Journal of School Health showed that although the idea of a “gateway drug” is accurate, the blame should not be put so heavily on marijuana, but on alcohol. The study showed that alcohol was the gateway drug, and that students who used it were far more likely to use other drugs in the future. [2] Arguments 1. The dangers of marijuana, while potentially real, are irrelevant to this debate. The reason for this is twofold: First, while it seems intuitive that legalization of drugs would lead to more drug abuse, in many cases use remained the same and in some cases it even decreased following legalization. Portugal is a great example; over a decade ago, they decriminalized all drugs and since then have seen a 50% reduction in drug abuse. [3] This means that potential dangers of marijuana should cause us to advocate more strongly for its legalization in order to reduce its use. Second, it is not the responsibility of the government to protect people from themselves. For example, while I personally think eating fast food is unhealthy in the same way that I think smoking marijuana is unhealthy, I am not going to have the government tell someone else what they can and cannot put into their bodies because they own their own bodies. 2. The war on drugs has caused incredible amounts of violence and death. Prohibition on marijuana causes the existence of drug cartels and gang violence, in the same way that the prohibition on alcohol did. Legalizing marijuana would put any cartel dependent on the marijuana black market out of business. 3. The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world. This is largely due to drug related arrests, with almost 2 million drug abuse violation arrests per year. More then 80% of these arrests are for possession, and not sale or manufacture. [4] A lot of money that could be saved by not having to imprison almost 1% of the population. 4. Marijuana has plenty of uses besides getting high. In fact, there are several strains of marijuana that contain little or no THC that could be and were once grown in the United States for a ton of other purposes. It can be used to make textiles (clothes, shoes, fabrics, canvas, net, rope), paper, building materials (cement, insulation, etc), food (margarine, vitamins, cooking oils, granola), hygiene products (soap, shampoo, lotion, etc), and industrial products (paints, varnishes, inks, lubricants, abrasive chemicals, etc). There is also incredible untapped potential in the medical benefits of marijuana. Many people with epilepsy have already benefited incredibly from the use of marijuana, and doctors are calling for permission to do more research into it. [5] Non-psychoactive cannabinoids have also demonstrated the ability to kill cancerous cells in patients with leukemia. [6] Keeping marijuana illegal is therefore preventing an incredible number of patients from getting treatment, holding back potentially lifesaving research, and shutting down potentially vibrant markets for marijuana's many other uses. Sources[1] . http://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov...[2] . http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com...[3] . http://www.forbes.com...[4] . http://www.bjs.gov...[5] . http://www.cincinnati.com...[6] . http://www.huffingtonpost.com...