Marjuana should be legal with a few restrictions.

Thanks for the interesting points. Opponent rebuttals #'s: #1."Tax revenue will not be as high as expected because the illegal price wil be higher than price of legal alternatives." and #2."Tremendous amounts of tax dollars spent on new beauracracies, but offers no ballpark estimate or cites any sources of the estimated cost only saying they would be "fairly significant" without having any data to back up his assertion. Alcohol takes in $9billion in taxes annualy (which is a lot) but the revenue is offset by social costs. Alcohol is a much more destructive substance than marijuana. #3. "The Federal Gov"t. takes in roughly $9 billion in taxes on alcohol annually [2]. This profit is offset, however, by severely high social costs." My opponent is likening the social costs of alcohol to the predicted social costs of marijuana, which can be proven false by the following evidence: "At the present time, the evidence to suggest an involvement of cannabis in road crashes is scientifically unproven." [1] On the other hand with alcohol" "Alcohol is a factor in 26% of the United StatesA533; crash costs. Alcohol-related crashes in the United States cost the public an estimated $114.3 billion in 2000, including $51.1 billion in monetary costs and an estimated $63.2 billion in quality of life losses. (For definitions of the cost categories, see the definitions fact sheet.) Alcohol-related crashes are deadlier and more serious than other crashes. People other than the drinking driver paid $71.6 billion of the alcohol-related crash bill." [2] #4."Regardless, passing laws with severe social ramifications from only a financial standpoint is dangerous." Whats severe social ramifications? You haven"t specified any. You have likened alcohol to have the same social costs as marijuana which is false based on the evidence I have given. #5."The fact that a slightly more dangerous drug is legal does not justify adding another harmful substance into the mix. If anything, this should raise questions about alcohol"s legality, but again, the pros/cons of alcohol are irrelevant to this debate" "Slightly more dangerous" is a matter of baseless opinion. In fact, alcohol posisoning kills more people than any other drug and is the deadlier than heroin and cocaine [3] " alcohol poisoning kills 80,000 people per year [4]. Marijuana poisoning kills 0. Also, if you remember the prohibition era you would know that it would be unwise to make alcohol illegal again " the rise of the mafia, "speakeasy"s", and other black market crime would erupt. #5."Marijuana"s effects should be judged based on the harm they cause alone, not simply by the fact that they"re supposedly "mild in comparison" to something else." The harm they cause is mild in comparison to alcohol - which is legal. This is a fair comparison because it takes into context the costs and benefits of drugs in comparison to one another, legal and illegal. In this case " it"s easily proven that marijuana has less social costs and less adverse side effects than alcohol " which is the world"s deadliest (legal) drug. [3] 6.""linked marijuana use to decreased IQ"" This is an excerpt taken from your same source that claims marijuana decreases IQ with regular use: "Observational studies in humans cannot account for all potentially confounding variables when addressing change in a complex trait like IQ, and future studies will be needed to further clarify exactly how much intelligence may be lost as a result of adolescent marijuana use"" [5] It was also noted that there was a change in socioeconomic status for the individuals tested which have used marijuana. This is more indicative of an IQ change: "" suggest that other factors, such as socioeconomic status, may account for the downward IQ trend the original authors reported." [5] #7. "Marijuana doubles chances of an accident " an excerpt from your source: "Driving simulation studies with experienced marijuana users suggest that when people have consumed high doses of the drug, there"s an increased risk of accident, but that, unlike with alcohol, users are aware of their impairment and tend to drive more cautiously, rather than with greater recklessness. [6] I"m not arguing to make marijuana legal for the sake of allowing people to drive high " that should be illegal just like being high off of anything " but the evidence of people driving high doesn"t show nearly as much damage as driving drunk on alcohol does " and those high on marijuana are likely to ". . .drive more cautiously rather than with greater recklessness." [6] #8."Marijuana linked with cancer"" "To date, no large scale, epidemiological studies exist demonstrating a correlation between THC and cancer." [7] #9."First of all, my opponent falsely claims in his title that cannabis is not addictive, then goes on to reference addiction statistics." My claim is that it is not physically addictive because there is no evidence to support that. My claims of marijuana addiction were of mental addiction. You could be addicted to Chi tea, for instance. It doesn"t legitimize a physical need for something, but rather a mental addiction - which could be potentially anything. #10."Marijuana dependance, on the other hand, can bring more serious consequences [than caffeine], as it is much stroinger/more damaging. " You didn"t cite any sources and failed to mention how it is more damaging than caffeine. Caffeine overdose can kill people, but too much marijuana cannot. #11. "The WebMD article he cited even makes the distinction between caffeine and street drugs, (marijuana being one of the latter)." This proves my point that Marijuana should not be an illegal street drug. In a category of street drugs, marijuana is nowhere near as damaging as other illegal street drugs, since the withdrawal effects of marijuana are nearly identical to caffeine addiction - which WebMD says is "not serious." #12. "According to drug-rehabs.com, marijuana users make up 16.1% of all rehab admissions [8]. Admissions of caffeine users into rehab are virtually unheard of." You left out the key phrase "Publicly funded" rehab admissions [8]. There are no publicly funded caffeine rehab centers. The 16.1% figure is misleading. Although the 16.1% may seem like a large number, it is not stating the proportion of marijuana users that seek rehab, but it is a proportion of people who are in rehab for marijuana, which is very, very small compared to the number of total marijuana users. We can see this when it is compared to the 13.7% of people in rehab for heroin, which has a much smaller minority of users than marijuana users. "Marijuana-related arrests (not only possession) for the same year were about 850,000 persons [9]." Exactly. See what a waste of time and tax money it is to make all of those arrests? I look forward to your response ! :) SOURCES: http://norml.org... [1] http://www.nhtsa.gov... [2] http://www.dailytech.com... [3] http://www.cdc.gov... [4] http://www.drugabuse.gov... [5] Read more: http://healthland.time.com... [6] http://www.psychologytoday.com... [7] http://www.drug-rehabs.com... [8].