Marijuana should be legalized

It Seems to me that the main reasons my opponent wants to keep the status quo of keeping marijuana criminalized and his reasons as he states, are that it affects the mental/physical health of the user. To demonstrate why this logic fails i will provide a few reason's why we need to ban Alcohol, Tobacco, or anything that might cause danger to the person or to the people around him. As we know these things are legal and as i demonstrate before some are even worse than marijuana for example in this website herehttps://patients4medicalmarijuana.wordpress.com... which shows whats in a marijuana smoke and a cigarette smoke and compares them and it shows that cigarettes are worse. As we all know anything we do has negative side effects, So by my opponents logic should we ban everything? I think everyone will say that's illogical. Now, unlike some things that are legal and have negative side effects here are some things that marijuana does not do 1. It is less additive then most other drugs and is less addictive then alcohol a legal drug!. https://www.psychologytoday.com... 2. marijuana has a WAY less death rate than any other drug plus in the video i send which is below the links below it tells more on the "Death rate" of marijuana http://archive.saferchoice.org... http://www.huffingtonpost.com... http://healthimpactnews.com... Here is also a video on marijuana which i think you might enjoy Also Marijuana has many... wait for it. Health Benefits!. http://www.businessinsider.com... So i might concede that some studies show that marijuana does cause some health problems which i can agree with but i say that the drugs we have legal now are worse than this new plant that we are going to legalize. Next i am going to use some of Con's logic to argue for to make alcohol and tobacco illegal We know that these two drugs are bad and as i pointed out worse than marijuana but here is the evidence http://www.marksdailyapple.com... http://www.niaaa.nih.gov... http://girlshealth.gov... Keep in mind these things are legalized!. I'm sure most people have taken a drink once in a while and have never got problems and they drink responsibly and the amount that do get addicted get worse than someone who somehow gets addicted to marijuana. Im pretty sure all of you voters who have drank aren't real criminals and you were just doing it for fun and most of you aren't dependent on alcohol right? I will also bring out more arguments for the legalization of marijuana and the determent's of the "Drug war" First of all many articles explain a lot of effects that the drug war has in general and i will go into detail on one or two of them depending if i can write more before the character limit http://www.huffingtonpost.com... http://www.tni.org... http://www.alternet.org... The Major thing i want to add for the legalization of marijuana is the rise in prison effects and how we are making the situation even worse than it already is http://www.businessinsider.com... http://www.drugwarfacts.org... http://law.jrank.org... I find it funny that in order for the government to save the people from doing something to themselves and ruining there lives, we will throw them in jail! then we will save there lives.... oh wait!. Also as the Con side showed the main reason to keep it illegal is because of the health effects and we need to save people from themselves but we need to ruin there lives with criminal chargers which will make them, not get a job, get inspected more by police, cast into prison, etc etc where he could be exposed to more lethal drugs and not getting a job or getting a criminal record leads to more drug use which makes the situation worse than it already was and makes the goal of the whole "war of drugs" pointless. Rising prison populations are now creating huge financial burdens to the united states and it even shows in the articles above, that states spend more on prisons than they do on higher education. Now what stops people from trying drugs in the first place? Threat of force and imprisonment? which makes it exciting to teenagers to use since there in there rebellious phase? or education where we talk to them and show them the effects and what they might bring if they try the drugs. I will lastly counter the points he made to my arguments 1. Saying that the only freedom we can have is without any laws is ludicrous we are social animals and as a group we sacrifice some rights for the benefit of the group but the real question is how many rights should we sacrifice in order to make a happy society? If we go by Con's logic we should restrict everything and become fascist in order to maintain a good society even though all of the things that get banned are done in the black market and always create more real crime and create more gangs and it is not regulated at all. 2. It seems to me that Con thinks that people cant smoke marijuana as responsible adults and if you take a little bit of something like alcohol it can have some health benefits and as i showed earlier marijuana if used properly does have medical benefits as well. and Con might say (despite marijuana being more safe than alcohol) What if they take a lot? and i would say back the same logic, What about taking too much alcohol which i showed before causes more harm to the user and the community around him, So should we ban alcohol? No we shouldn't and we have before and it failed and made the situation even worse and history is repeating itself with this "Drug War" I'm not saying all drugs should be illegal in fact most drugs should be legal but the question is, Is it worth the damages it brings? and as we learned from trying to ban alcohol no it wasn't worth it and we now realize that we made a mistake in trying to prohibit marijuana 3. The number of drugs cartels use is 30% marijuana http://www.insightcrime.org... Now a case might be made that as markets change they might switch to something more in demand and legal but the reason why cartels use marijuana is because there's a demand for them mostly because marijuana is the 3rd most popular drug in america http://norml.org... and as we see around us cartels are bringing the violence and rise in organized crime and creating a bigger violent crime rate because of this but you don't see another al capone buying out politicians and creating street gang wars and you know why? because alcohol is legal!. Thank you for reading over my debate :), cant wait for the response!