UK government should legalize weed

- 1 - Taxing Marijuana Yes it is possible that England could tax marijuana for a profit, however there are several factors you must look into first to see that taxing marijuana will bring in barely any profit at all. England has a very small population compared to other nations, and this is mostly due to the very small size of the country. England is only the 80th largest country in the world in terms of land area, and their land area makes them only about the size of Florida. England is also ranked 22nd overall for largest population in the world, at about 62 million people. http://en.wikipedia.org... http://en.wikipedia.org... So that being said we have a decent sized population living on a ridiculously small area of land to support all of them meaning that conservation of available land, conservation of resources, and utilizing land carefully are all massive issues to the British peoples. Using what little open land England has to grow Marijuana to sell it to a population that only a fraction of which would even be interested in consuming would not be a very wise investment for this island nation. The small size of the country would limit how much Marijuana the government could grow, the number of people who would consume it would only be a fraction of the population, but think about the agencies, bureaucracies, laws, officials, and workers that would be required to ensure this potential industry is kept in code. All that would suck out any profits that the government could make from this already limited product, potentially even costing the government money. - 2 - Health The Pro only says how Marijuana will not be a gateway drug because alcohol and tobacco companies would control it, and we all know how safe the products that alcohol and tobacco companies sell to people are (sarcasm). The only aspect of health the Pro looked at this through is the that Marijuana would not be a gateway drug. However that is simply not true and there are many many more health complications caused by Marijuana then simply being a gateway drug. Marijuana is a gateway drug due to the dependency affect it has on people from chemicals within the marijuana itself, not the people handling the marijuana. Marijuana sold by a drug dealer would have the same effects as marijuana sold by a tobacco company so marijuana would still be an easy gateway drug to other drugs. Health wise Marijuana is a proven carcinogen that has over 400 chemicals, it ravages teenagers who are most susceptible to becoming addicted/dependent on the drug, and the second hand smoke from Marijuana much like second hand smoke from cigarettes is just as intoxicating as the marijuana itself. This means that people who dont smoke Marijuana could be harmed by it just by standing close to someone who has recently used it. http://www.teendrugabuse.us... So to summarize legalizing marijuana would not be a good idea if you want to believe it will not cause harm, because it puts millions of youth in dependency and addiction clinics while causing cancer in the long term. Short term wise marijuana is related to car accident deaths too since marijuana affects how the brain processes information which has caused people to not be able to react in time and end up dying in a car accident. Marijuana if legalized would be very unsafe to a good number of Britons. - 3 - Comparison to Amsterdam The Pro tries to say that less people use it there proportionally then other countries even though its legal, and that the Pro thinks Britain would be no different. He offers no evidence to suggest why and only offers his opinion since he himself said that " it is my belief that after a few years of high use due to excitement would soon drop creating a similar effect to that of Amsterdam." But here is the thing, 1, Amsterdam is a city not a country, and 2 England and Amsterdam have two totally different peoples, cultures, traditions, lifestyles, opinions, politics, standards, morals, philosophy's, languages, etc. One cannot just assume what happens in Amsterdam will happen in all of England because the two are immensely different from each other. - 4 - Social effect The Pro uses a possibly made up study to indicate that if the police did not crack down on marijuana use, a few more people would use it. According to this study though they asked a very small part of one city to an unknown number of people, and even then some of them agreed they would use it. Now if you take that extremely small study (that the Pro did not care to source) and multiply it to all of England's population, than what you have is a very large number of people who would only CONSIDER using it. However this study does not take into account that the cost of buying weed would be high causing people to stay agaisnt it, even scare others away, or maybe cause users to quit sicne prices are so high. Point is, this un-sourced study does not take into account several factors and was only used on a ridiculously small number of people to imply Marijuana legalization would have no effect, but in reality it would have a very large social impact.