legalizing marijuana

In order for PRO to win this debate, PRO must prove that legalizing marijuana has a net benefit to society. While PRO can explain how marijuana is less harmful then other drugs, this is not a criteria to show why a drug should be illegal or not. Instead, the main factor is the consequence of drug legalization, not the drug itself. I will show, while marijuana is less harmful then other drugs, marijuana should remain illegal due to the benefits of marijuana illegalization. Main Argument:1) People will do illegal drugs for the sake of doing illegal drugs. As PRO has stated, marijuana is a relatively safe drug, in which I agree. Therefore since people will do illegal drugs anyways, the government might as well trick people into thinking that marijuana is “bad” and “edgy” so that they will not turn to harder drugs. There are powerful incentives to do illegal activities as a child. The main motivation of course is because it makes one “cool”. Rebelling against a force that has the power to obliterate the entire earth’s population is seen as cool. It shows a willingness to take risks and assert one’s alpha dominance. Peer groups and females reward these people through sex, and social prestige. Studies have shown that teenagers and non-married people are more likely to commit crimes[2]. The theory for this is that teenagers act this way to obtain relationships with women. The same trend has also been seen in science achievements and men are affected more by this then female. Female go for alpha males and one way to demonstrate this is to commit crimes. While there are many alternative legal drugs, many teenagers choose instead to take illegal drugs. For example, Salvia is a very powerful psycheldic drug and can come in different levels of extract. The higher the extract, the more intense the psycheldic experience is. Yet marijuana is more popular then Salvia. There are harder, more dangerous illegal drugs out there on the street that include cocaine, crystal meth and heroin. If marijuana is outlawed, then teenagers will just turn to alternative forms of drugs that are more potent. Rebuttal:1) Marijuana is not addictiveI agree that marijuana is not addictive, which is why it will not suffer some of the negative side-effects of prohibitation like other illegal drugs. For example, since marijuana is less addictive it is less likely to affect one personally, and one does not have to worry about the effects of admitting to doing drugs and facing the consequences, since one can more easily quit. The problem is much worse for a cocaine user, in which the substance is addictive, and the user has to choose between keeping the addiction or facing legal consequences and telling one’s family in order to quit. There also will be less violent-related drug crimes, for example robbery to buy drugs, since the demand for marijuana is not high enough that one will harm others or rob places in order to buy marijuana. 2) Prohibition of drugs increases crimePRO states how the prohibition of drugs, for example in the case of alcohol, leads to an increase in organized crime. However, PRO is not advocating a position that abolishes drugs, he’s advocating abolishing marijuana. This will not solve the organized crime problem. Cocaine and other drugs will still be legal, which are responsible for most organized crime. Legalizing marijuana will not decrease organized crime. More so, as explained earlier, the main problems associated with drug prohibition is that drugs are addictive. Alcohol is addictive, so people are more likely to do horrible things to get it. However, PRO stated that marijuana is not addictive. In fact, prohibitation of many non-addictive substances have been successful. For example, it is illegal for toys to be made with lead paint. However, you do not see people shooting one another for lead paint toys just because of prohibition of lead paint toys. . http://salviadragon.com... [1]. http://www.aic.gov.au... [2]