Marijuana is harmless and is safer to use long-term than alcohol or tobacco.

Counter RebuttalsA3 - All things can be potentially harmful if used improperly. Burgers, medication, a chair, you name it. All things can be harmful if they are not used in a way advised by either a manufacturer or a medical expert. Arguing that marijuana is harmful because people use it improperly in the form of smoking/overinhaling it would be akin to arguing that chairs are inherently harmful because someone ripped off a chair leg and stabbed themself in the stomach with it. A4- The medically advised/usage of marijuana on par with medical opinion is the proper way of using it. Inhalation of smoke emitted from marijuana is a popular way of consumption, but it is not the proper or directly endorsed medical methodology of taking marijuana and is thus less relevant to the resolution of "marijuana" in general. If marijuana is administered properly in it's medical form, it is not harmful in almost all cases - it's actually beneficial and curing! This proves marijuana is not harmful, and only can have negative side effects if used recreationally without the proper method of taking it. B1- Marijuana is not a new fab. Admittedly, there were not as many long term studies 40 years ago as there are now, but as of the time of this debate, all of the preexisting long term studies from the 20th century have been unable to correlate long term death to marijuana usage. There have been studies capable of correlating alchohol and tobacco to deaths, however. [4] [5]B2 - B5: My argument is that you can only overdose on marijuana if you take 40,000 times the regular amount in a reasonably collapsed period of time, which is not reccomended. This eliminates any possible argument correlating overdoses or short-term deaths to marijuana. If marijuana is used regularly and to the medically reccomended standard, then it has no proven correlation to death. The same cannot be said for the liver problems caused by the regular consumption of alchohol and the imminent poisoning resulting in the consumption of nicotine. New Rebuttals1. Marijuana SmokeThe debate is over whether Marijuana in itself is harmful, not whether Marijuana smoke is harmful. Nearly all things - including plastic, wood, and water - have an adverse effect on the lungs if the offset produced as a result of burning them is inhaled in large quantities. Thus, labelling marijuana harmful because the smoke produces as an offset is harmful to the lungs would be redundant - all smoke inhalation is harmful to the lungs, not just marijuana smoke inhalation. Smoke is harmful, not marijuana. If marijuana is consumed without the presence of smoke, negative effects are either not present or extremely less so. The medically sound version and thus proper consumption of marijuana does not involve smoke inhalation. Nicotine is harmful outside of smoke inhalation. If ingested in it's raw form, nicotine has been proven to be the equivalent of a deadly poison [1]. Thus, nicotine (aside from nicotine smoke) is inherently harmful. Concerning the portion of the debate regarding the effects of tobacco vs the effects of marijuana on the lungs, it is untrue that tobacco causes less damage. The University of San Francisco conducted a study comparing the long term effect on the lungs of tobacco smokers vs marijuana smokers, and they actually found that minimal usages of marijuana for the purposes of controlling pain or depression, stimulating appetite, elevating mood and managing other chronic symptoms had no adverse effect on the body if consumed, and a minimal one if inhaled [2]2. Abnormalities in the brainThe study in question does not outline the effects of marijuana in a neutral scenario, and even admits that most of it's results are using animal test subjects, and that most of it's results are not directly correlated to the far less susceptible human brain. There was only one instance in the study where humans were studied at all, and that was in the instance of growing adolescents. Adolescent exposure to almost all drugs and medications can have an adverse effect on the growth of their brain [3]. Marijuana is not harmful in this regard; all that this study would go to prove is that overconsumption of foreign or medical substances during puberty or time of growth is harmful. Additionally, the study only proves that marijuana has "adverse" cognitive effects on the amygdala. This would disrupt things like like sense of awareness, learning and temporary memory in the hippocampus, and decision-making skills. These are the normal side effects associated with a high and don't really correlate to definitive harmfulness: some people seek more ease in decision making and to be less aware of the pain they are in. [1] - (. http://www.michigan.gov...) [2] - (. http://www.ucsf.edu...) [3] - (. http://kidshealth.org...) [4] - (. http://www.cdc.gov...) [5] - (. http://www.cdc.gov...)