Alcohol and cannabis

My opponent asks me: "I assume you have no experience smoking it? I must implore you to answer this because if you don't know what its like then I ask how you wish to carry out this debate?" Sorry, narc. I'm in law school. I'm not admitting to a crime.Extend C1: gateway drugMy opponent agrees with my argument that it's a gateway drug due to illegality exposure (getting to know drug dealers). He says, "Illegality causes exposure to drugs because other illegal drugs are kept by dealers sometimes." The reason I made this argument is because the resolution is present tense. My opponent has to prove that today, alcohol is more harmful than reefer. This topic was not about legalization. My opponent also concedes my arguments that it's a gateway drug due to yes ladders and peer groups. He merely says that alcohol should have the same effect. However, alcohol, nicotine, and caffeine are not viewed as "drugs" in the same way that cocaine, heroin, and hallucinogens are. I would have a hard time, based on chemical composition, explaining why there is a societal distinction but there is. It may have to do with *past illegality.* but even legalizing today would not declassify marijuana as a "drug" - at least not for a generation.In addition, my opponent has no specific response to the Yale study which found that marijuana use made the use of prescription painkillers more likely. Given that painkillers are "legal" in a sense, this disproves my opponent's argument that once drugs become legal, they do not lead to more intense thrill-seeking by trying harder drugs.Extend C2: brain damageMy opponent says this claim comes only from studies in mice. However, MRI studies of humans have found that long-term marijuana use causes brain damage in the thalamus. [1] Normal people's brains who smoke weed long term begin to look like those of schizophrenics in terms of thalamus damage. [1] People with schizophrenia who smoke weed have *even more* damaged tahalmi. [1] This is proof that weed causes schizophrenia to trigger or makes it worse. My opponent merely asserts that there is a co-correlation with poverty, without providing any data to back up his claim. Even if there were such data, the MRI evidence is conclusive.Extend C3: effect on long-term motivationI cited studies that long-term Mary Jane use permanently depresses dopamine levels, which affects motivation. My opponent claims that laziness among pot smokers is just a stereotype. To the extent that people think if you smoke weed once or twice you'll become a burnout, this is just a stereotype. But the dopamine studies prove that it's not a stereotype for long-term use.My opponent's single data point (his head chef) does not disprove studies on multiple individuals. For all we know, my opponent's head chef would be the next Gordon Ramsey if he didn't smoke weed. It's possible that he had abnormally high levels of dopamine to start with, so the effects of marijuana only slowed him down a little. It also matters how often he smoked (weekends versus twice a day).Extend C4: munchies and obese peopleI provided studies that marijuana triggers hunger in people. The US is fat enough. We don't need to make it worse with ganja smoking.Extend C5: AddictiveYou don't want to get between a pothead and his weed when it's been awhile. He will EAT YOU. Potheads are dangerous when they're jonesing. I provided studies that weed is both psychologically and physically addictive. In that regard, it is dangerous because it's not easy to quite and people will go through withdrawals. When burnout potheads (who have low long term motivation) finally get jobs, they were be *extremely* irritable because they cannot smoke pot during the workday. This is bad for everyone who has to interact with them. Every time you get bad customer service, it's a jonesing pothead on the end of the line.Extend C6: lower sperm countDropped by my opponent. Dropped means its a concession and my opponent can't argue it later. Pot will kill all the sperm in society and no one will be able to have children. There will be no young workers to pay for Medicare and Social Security and the US will implode.Extend C7: cancerMy opponent concedes my studies that weed smoking is as bad as cigarettes. That means 1/2 of long-term sticky icky smokers will die of cancer. Pretty harmful.My opponent claims that people can just eat it instead. But few people exclusively eat their weed since it takes more time to prepare. And long-term users need a lot of weed to get high, so baking it into things makes the entire food product taste like weed. It also makes it hard to share food with non-smokers. There are a lot of practical reasons that nearly every weed smoker blazes the majority of their stash.Extend C8: alcohol gets you laidUnrefuted. My opponent makes factual claims here with no sources, so as far as I know he's just making those numbers up. My opponent drops that alcohol is a social lubricant whereas weed makes you anti-social, which makes you less happy.In addition, a comprehensive national study found that marijuana is implicated in 1/9 of all fatal car crashes. [4] Prior to the study, some of these fatal crashes would have been falsely attributed to alcohol (even though the person was well below the legal limit) because the person was in fact cross-faded out of their mind on weed, but only drank a tiny amount of alcohol.Weed is dangerous. The fact that people don't realize it's ability to impair their judgment and abilities makes it even *more* dangerous than alcohol because people don't realize how badly it will affect them.C9: New argument, weed is bad cuz it funds Mexican drug cartelsA study found that legalization in Washington and Colorado cost Mexican drug cartels $3 billion in drug revenue. [2] Extrapolating that to the states where it's still illegal, that means that weed is responsible for hundreds of billions in Mexican cartel revenue. That money has enabled Mexican cartels to kill 60,000 people in Mexico's drug wars. [3][1] http://tinyurl.com... [2] http://tinyurl.com... [3] http://tinyurl.com... [4] http://tinyurl.com...