Legalization of Marijuana

Thanks for accepting :)"Look, anything that you take one of and want more of is addictive. Video games are addictive, sports are addictive, & hitting on women at bars is addictive."Thank you because this is exactly my point. Physically marijuana is not addictive (i.e. in the way heroin or meth is), and mentally, marijuana is no different from any of the things you mentioned. So why then should it be banned? Should video games be illegal? What about sports or talking to women? "Not an expert on weed, but I'm pretty sure that - like any other substance - yes you can. Weed gives your body an unnatural effect, and smoking too much weed might cause harm. I'm not saying it'll kill you, just that it'll harm you." That's just it, it is not like any other substance, weed is literally the safest consumable substance out there (even more so than water). What harm do you speak of? If there is no death or other adverse affects then there is no harm. In order to consume an amount of marijuana to the point of toxicity would require a human being to smoke 1000+ joints in the span of 12 minutes. Like I said, physically impossible, look it up. "So tell me again how getting a sudden urge to eat all the cookie dough, potato chips, cream cheese & marshmallows in your house isn't a negative effect?"You said you were a non-smoker but that was unnecessary as I can see this in your arguments. As a proud marijuana smoker I can tell you that what you gave is a gross overexageration of the munchies. Yes an increase in appetite is an effect but that's about all it is. One does not go into a gluttonous rage upon consuming cannabis and one would hardly call heightened appetite a negative effect, especially seeing as how it benefits many (i.e. cancer patients). And to clarify, that point was to discredit the supposed negative health effects of marijuana (i.e. lung cancer, brain cell destruction) not psychoactive effects (i.e. munchies, giggles)."How is it flawed? People who do drugs tend to take other drugs. Why? Because people who take drugs probably have a rebellious personality. They do one rebellious act against the law, they want to do another, just to get that rush of doing something illegal. Teens drinking alcohol is just as much of a gateway drug as weed, but weed is still a gateway drug."OK, first I'll explain my logic and then respond to your points. It is a flawed theory because it basically states that because and only because you performed act A, you then performed act B. If there is a physical, or systematic force connecting the acts then you can say that act A was the gateway for act B. For example, you drink a bottle of water within 30 seconds, after 20 minutes your digestive tract has taken the nutrients and what not from the water. Then, what's left is waste and you now have to pee, therefore because you drank water you went to go pee. This works as both a physical and systematic gateway example because physically, there is water in your bladder because you drank it and it needs to come out, systematically, peeing is the end phase of the digestive system that started when you drank the water. There is no natural physical or systematic connection between marijuana and other drugs. It is easy to say that X amount of heroin, cocaine, and meth users used marijuana first, but this misleads from the why. Marijuana is the most popular illegal drug in the United States today. Therefore, people who have used less popular drugs such as heroin, and cocaine are likely to have also used marijuana. Anyone willing to use heroin would obviously be willing to use weed, but few weed smokers would even consider using anything stronger, there are even those who don't drink alcohol. This because marijuana users know of it's benign nature from first hand experience and can clearly see the difference from it and other drugs. The fact of the matter is that anything close to the gateway theory is actually promoted by marijuana prohibition. How, because an uniformed cannabis consumer wants to purchase more, they go to the black market dealer and purchase, then the dealer, who supplies all kinds of drugs, pushes his/her other, more addictive substances onto the consumer and you have a gateway theory. Were marijuana legalized one could go to a nice simple shop purchase their product an be on their way. "They do one rebellious act against the law, they want to do another, just to get that rush of doing something illegal. " This is not credible because motivations for using drugs in any way vary widely and cannot be defined with so simple a reason. Just because someone uses drugs does not mean they have a rebellious personality, that's like saying someone who gets A's and B's in school is a socially reserved bookworm. Just like everything in anti-weed propaganda; it makes sense but if you really analyze, it logically proves to be untrue."It completely does. Alchohol does too, every mood-changing substance does." I am not trying to be rude but "it completely does" is not an arguement. Please backup your statements/points with logic and or facts. However I will elaborate on my point for clarification. Under the influence of marijuana, a few general effects are euphoria, mild anxiety, mild paranoia, munchies, giggles, etc. Basically, none of these effects are adverse in and of themselves to the point of making the the substance dangerous. With alcohol, the consumer is severely punished for drunk driving or over aggresiveness not the product. This is because the consumer is stilll responsible for his own actions. If a child eats alot of sugar and is uncontrollable for the rest of the night and hurts themselves, do you ban sugar for all or do you blame the childs parents for allowing them to consume that much?"Yeah, and you know what happens then? Weed stops being cool and teens turn to drugs that cause them actual harm such as cocaine."Ok, well at least you acknowledge that weed does not harm people and that youth use will be decreased so I don't need to go into that. However, the notion that weed will no longer be the "cool" drug and "rebellious" users will go onto other hard drugs is yet another non-fact based hypothesis, one I can disprove. The reason weed usage is so poular and widespread among teens is because they are aware of its benign nature despite the governments and anti-weed groups lies and propaganda. This leads to increasing acceptance and use of cannabis in youth. On the other hand, youth are also aware of the dangers many "hard" drugs present and make the decision to stay away from them. Therefore if weed was legalized, youth would'nt simply switch to heroin or crack because they know of the associated risk. For your Benefits response:Currently, weed is used for medical purposes to a degree. However this degree would be exponentialzed along with the overall benefits were it legalized nationwide. Because now only a few states have actually legalized the use of medical marijuana. How would making weed legal make people not wanna use it recreationally? Explain your logic please. Marijuana is the number one most used illicit drug, and the number one U.S. cash crop (even though it is illegal). All of that revenue is going to thousands of dealers pockets, and they often have to resort to violence to protect what they have or expand it. Were the business taken away from the dealers (through legalization) the amount of crime would be decreased substantially because they would no longer be any weed to fight over. With regards to drugged driving, weed prohibition is a colossal failure, people still and will still use regardless of the laws, which means there are going to be drugged drivers regardless which means there is no point in banning weed for such a purpose.Unfortunately, I cannot fit all of my responses in this round so I will make my best efforts to respond to the last two next round.