It is unethical to legalize marijuana for recructional use.

Introduction My burden of proof is to negate any claims that it is unethical. However, I will go further; I shall also attempt to demonstrate that it is infact unethical to ban marijuana. I will begin by refuting my opponents arguments. Refutations1. Disintegration in to a state of nature Social contract theoryHobbes social contract theory makes no claim to ethics of government. Simply stating it does is an assertion without warrant. In addition the theory is not universally applicable. I do not recall signing any such social contract. To assert that it magically applies to me, or any others because the state says so is unwarranted. It also is fairly irrational to use as a basis for banning marijuana. The individual rights that people are ceding on the basis that others do, tend to be property rights, based on the (false, but thats another debate) assumption that the state is superior at organazing certain aspects of society. A whole society ceding the right to use any substance they wish would be completely irrational. You also make the slippery slope fallacy; you assert that by legalizing marijuana we would enter a state of nature. This is bizarre. We would not enter an anarchic state because one regulation is removed. This is only consistant if one is making the absurd claim that the government should regulate absolutely everything lest we enter this state of nature. For rather self evident reasons, for example the practical issues of getting a state permission slip to visit the toilet, this is undesirable. In addition you make the unwarranted assumption that an anarchic society is undesirable. Out of politeness and deference to the actual resolution I will not focus too heavily on this (though I am certain I would easily defeat you in a debate on whether anarcho-capitalism was superior to state planning), though I still require some sort of justification for this assumption. 2. Reason for protection is the health risksYou make no argument to support your assertion that the government should protect people from their own choices, or even why it would be unethical not to do so. So I ask; Why should the government protect people from themselves? They have made the choice to trade the health benefits for their own utility. You refer to ciggerettes, do you believe they should be illegal too, considering their health risks are much greater? What about caffiene, that brutal and harmful drug. Evidently not, however, your argument for their legality is shockingly weak; they are a social norm. That has absolutely nothing to do with the ethics of their legality. This here is a clear contradiction in your argument. If we were to take your argument to its logical conclusion, the government would be ethically required to select your food for you (fast food is far more harmful to your health than marijuana) and prevent people crossing roads for the purpose of recreation (like visiting that night-club across the road, or doing some window shopping); a far more dangerous activity than using marijuana. Counter argumentMy opponent makes no actual attempt to show that making marijuana legal would be unethical. He merely points to their very slight health risks and somehow makes the non-sequiter leap that therefore letting people use it is illegal. We must consider the resolution completely negated until my opponent can justify this point. The ethics of freedom A good starting place for ethics is to consider the non-aggression principle*; that any action performed which does not harm another or another's property is not unethical, and similarly the inverse, that every action which does harm another or another's property is unethical. It is considered harm to prevent an individual from performing an action which does not harm anyone, as one is aggressing against them. Not only does this justify letting people get high, as this can be done without harming anyone else, it also means the act of making it illegal to smoke weed is unethical, as the government is applying force against individuals to prevent them from performing an ethical action. ConclusionNot only has my opponent failed to give a single ethical reason for keeping marijuana illegal, I have demonstrated that it is infact unethical for the government to use force to prevent people from using marijuana in a way which does not harm others. It seems that my opponent believes that just by name dropping an interesting and famous philosopher without understanding his philosophies he would gain the upper hand. Alas he is mistaken. [Also my opponents sources are terrible, they are just links to websites without any direction to what information he intends us to find there or where it can be found. I do not believe I have made any claims which require sources though I shall provide them upon request] The resolution is firmly negated. SHADAZEE! *I am willing to justify this philosophically this if requested, however, I shall not do so at this juncture as no other ethical system has been proposed and most people tend to agree with it broadly speaking.