legalizing marijuana

It is noted that my argument of the economic benefit of community service has been dropped and I have mentioned it in previous rounds. This is another added benefit of the illegalization of marijuana which the voters should weight in to their decision of whether the legalization of marijuana has a net benefit to society or not. People doing drugs for the sake of illegal drugs: PRO has never disputed the reasoning behind my argument which has strong empirical evidence to back it up. PRO cites that heroin use has gone done from heroin-assistance treatment. However, that has nothing to do with marijuana legalization causing heroin use to double, since the two aren’t related. His findings in no way refute my claims. Prohibition of marijuana:PRO states that he does not believe in gateway drug theory, which is true[1] but then goes on to state the theory that sounds a lot like gateway theory. I will debunk these claims. Pro then goes on to state that if marijuana is illegal, then police officers can focus more resources on hard drugs rather than marijuana. Billions have been spent on the war on drugs and drugs are still around. So prohibition is clearly a failure, which I agree with. If prohibition does not work with marijuana or alcohol, why do we expect it to work on other drugs? Pumping money into police resources will fail, but the illegalization of marijuana has been more successful for stirring others to safer illegal drug usage. Pro then goes onto state that if a person knows someone who sells marijuana then he/she has a link that he/she can buy harder drugs from. Yet, why do we assume that people will no longer want to buy hard drugs? What makes harder drugs so special even though prohibition of alcohol did not work? Does PRO really believe that it will become more difficult to find hard drugs? No. Finding drugs is easy. As stated before, empirical evidence shows that people are more likely to do hard drugs If marijuana is legalized, from the source from the department of justice and the source above (source #1). Medical marijuana:As discussed previously, there are side effects associated with marijuana. If we consider the indirect deaths caused through marijuana, from traffic accidents, the death rate from marijuana is higher than zero. Furthermore, we don’t know the long-term side effects of marijuana use since there have not been any studies on them. Tobacco used to be considered safe but we all know the ill consequences of it. Current studies indicate the following negative side effects of marijuana:-use is associated with impaired fetal growth-development of mental disorders such as schizophrenia and depression-cannabis associated respiratory disease [2]PRO states that 100 million people have overdosed on Tylenol. This is obviously false, considering that 100 million people consist of about 1/3 of the US population. Looking through his source, 100 million people take Tylenol, and the amount of people that actually die from Tylenol is 100 people, a 1 in a million chance of someone dying from Tylenol use. Still, even If one believes that one death is too many, there are still other drugs that one can take that have no deaths associated with it and very little side effects associated with it. Take for example, emetrol, one of the drugs listed as nausea reducing in my source. It has no reported deaths to it and very little side effects to it[3] a much better alternative then medical marijuana. Taxation of marijuana:As stated before, this point is moot because the state has not exhausted its form of tax revenue which PRO has not disputed. Furthermore, I do not dispute that some people will choose to buy marijuana instead of grow it. However as prices increase demand decreases as people find substitutes. The easy substitute is to grow one’s own marijuana. Therefore, even the state tried to maximize the price of marijuana to generate revenue; it still would not generate enough revenue since as prices increase people will just choose to grown their own marijuana. Conclusion:I urge my voters to vote CON. PRO has not demonstrated any benefits for the legalization of marijuana. While I have demonstrated how the legalization of marijuana in the Netherlands has doubled the use of heroin use. Remember, the point was not to demonstrate whether marijuana is a bad drug or not, but the effects of legalization or illegalization. I have provided ample evidence, both theoretical and empirical of how the illegalization of marijuana reduces hard drug usage. People doing harder drugs are worse for society then people doing soft drugs, and therefore I urge a vote for CON. Thank you. . http://healthland.time.com...[1]http://en.wikipedia.org...[2]http://www.drugs.com...[3]