Marijuana should be legalized for medical and recreational use.

You can point out all you want, but the comparison is valid. Both are considered recreational drugs. Marijuana is all natural, and helps with many ailments. It has been prescribed and freely ingested for hundreds of years or more. Not one death has been fully attributed to it at all. http://freecannabis.net... Prohibition of marijuana is comparable to that of alcohol in the early part of 1900s. People are going to do it, regardless of legality, if marijuana was legally available as an option other than alcohol, you would be essentially saving those lives from liver disease, alcoholism, and other short or long term effects of alcohol, in exchange for some slight memory loss, (which is why smart phones come in handy) good sleep, and a surge in sales at local cookie factories. For those states that have yet to legalize, the marijuana market belongs mainly to drug sellers that sell far worse chemicals along with it. Looking at Colorado, where it has become legal, crime rates have dropped, and jobs have been created. Since the first retail marijuana stores opened on January 1st, 2014, the state of Colorado has benefitted from a decrease in crime rates, a decrease in traffic fatalities, an increase in tax revenue and economic output from retail marijuana sales, and an increase in jobs. http://www.mintpressnews.com... Farmers are finally making a decent living now. Taxation of marijuana has helped build schools, and more. The age requirement helps keep the plant out of underage hands, when drug dealers have no age requirements, and young customers may be tempted to buy more dangerous drugs. The money from these deals usually go to buy guns, etc. Cartels get a lot of business from the black market, which is unavoidable due to the increase in useage, so keeping the sale illegal is ideal to them. The prison industry also gains plenty from prohibition of marijuana, because most people don't want to quit using, regardless of legality, resulting in overcrowded prison populations, most for as little as a single cannabis cigarette. It is for this reason America has the highest percentage of incarcerated people's in the world. Smoking the plant, while far less dangerous than cigarettes, provide the easiest, quickest release of thc, but with legalization, comes more innovative, safer techniques for intake, such as edibles and vaping. http://www.iflscience.com...https://en.m.wikipedia.org... Big pharmacy, which accounts for very serious side effects, will also take a paycut with the legalization of marijuana, which I'd like to point out to our voters you have dropped. Over half of American adults have at least tried marijuana. Over half of Americans at least think it's a good idea to legalize it. It's a creation of nature that has harmless side effects in most people, and to those who feel it dangerous, or decide they would like to keep their short term memory, only need to stay away from the plant. Did you know that the USFG prescribed a few people(and still supply to this day) several marijuana cigarettes every day? They know it has medical significance, even admitting that cannabis cures cancer in question 6 of the q&a section of the .gov link below, which is hypocritical.http://www.cbsnews.com...http://www.cancer.gov...Doctors, lawyers, and business owners like myself smoke cannabis on a daily basis. While it's best done in privacy to unwind. Most of America thinks it's a good thing, it makes most people happy with very little dangers, if any. Notice how many time my opponent uses words like "may" or "could" and saying they don't know the long-term effects. We've been using this God given plant for centuries, is it possible that there are no long term effects? If you are scared of it, don't use it. Simple as that, but prohibition is not working right now, and we should learn from the areas that have legalized it, and move forward. Many states would have already done so I'm my opinion, if it weren't for the USFG. The government has a shortage of hackers, some of the smartest men and women on the planet in my honest opinion, because none of the best ones can pass a urinalysis for cannabis. So much for that whole brain killing argument.http://motherboard.vice.com... http://www.wsj.com...