Resolved: Marijuana should be legalized in the United States.

I will show each individual contention in this round and show why I have won them all. I'll start off with my own. Pro Contention 1: Making marijuana illegal does not stop people from buying and consuming it. My opponent has agreed with me on this point, but argues that it is not grounds for legalization of the drug. He says that you could use this argument for the legalization of any drug, such as cocaine, heroin, and meth. However, the drugs my opponent mentioned are dangerous in both the short and long term. All of the ones my opponent listed can kill you, whereas marijuana does virtually no serious short term damage and very little serious damage in the long term. If we're going to make this drug illegal, then to be consistent we have to make alcohol and tobacco illegal because they have also been proven to do more damage. The whole point of this contention is because marijuana does little damage to people, it is not grounds to make it illegal and if it were to be illegal, that does not stop people from buying and consuming it. There is no reason to compare it to harder drugs here because harder drugs are seldom used compared to marijuana and they do a lot of damage. . http://knowledgex.camh.net... Pro Contention 2: Making marijuana illegal infringes on individual liberty Con does not deny the reality of this contention. By Oxford's definition of liberty, making marijuana illegal is an infringement on liberty. Rather than denying this, my opponent says that legalizing marijuana would do more harm than good to society. Except, no it wouldn't. Most people that use marijuana for personal use do not seriously harm others. Of course there are some who do, but that is not grounds to make the drug illegal. By that logic, we should make alcohol and medications with a drowsy effect illegal because they cause more accidents than marijuana. There is some good in making it legal. Individual liberty would be restored, less people would be in jail, and the government would bring in more money because marijuana would be taxed. Pro Contention 3: The war on drugs has unintended consequences. For the most part, I was talking about racial unintended consequences because the war on drugs disproportionately incarcerates people of color. My opponent simply states that marijuana legalization will not solve this because people of color will be disproportionately incarcerated anyway because like I pointed out, it is easier to charge them and they get stuck with worse attorneys. My opponent should be aware however, that the vast majority of the U. S prisoners are black or brown and are in prison for drug usage. Sometimes they get stuck with long prison sentences that end up ruining their lives. For my opponent to say that ending the drug war would not significantly change the mass incarceration of people of color, he must not be aware of who exactly is in prison today and why. Ending the drug war would almost completely fix the issue of mass incarceration of people of color. . http://www.drugwarfacts.org... Con Contention 1: Making marijuana legal will increase the users Yes it is true my opponent and I agree on this point, however I argue that there are benefits from this and that this is more of a cause and effect statement rather than a reason to have marijuana illegal. A benefit of this includes more tax revenue for the federal government. Like I stated, in just one one year, Colorado received 573 million dollars in sales from marijuana and 70 million dollars in tax revenue(This is correcting my statement that there was 573 million in tax revenue) and this is a growing number each year. Now apply that to the rest of the country. Colorado is a small state, so California's revenues will be much larger. This will result in billions of dollars in revenue for the federal government. My opponent argues that this further distracts the government from cutting spending. I would argue that the government is incompetent and is usually distracting itself, but my opponent cannot prove his statement because it is hypothetical. And the argument is weird. Marijuana is a tax that we do not have to raise on all of the country in order to bring in more revenue. What does that have to do with cutting spending? I agree, we should cut spending, but I don't think tax revenues from marijuana interfere with that. . http://www.thecannabist.co... Con Contention 2: Marijuana is a dangerous drug. Here's Con's first part of his most recent argument for contention 2: "Pro concedes that marijuana is a dangerous drug when he compares it to other drugs he deems dangerous, such as tobacco and alcohol. Since he does concede that marijuana is dangerous, then his previous argument in contention 2 where he states, ". .. but also protect their personal habits as long as those habits are not a danger to society. 'becomes moot'" Let me clear this up. I did not say that marijuana was a danger to society as my opponent implies. What I was getting at in my argument was that it had risks to it, and we must look at this issue in perspective. So I did not say anything contradictory here. My opponent argues that if you believe that tobacco and alcohol are bad, why would you want to bring marijuana in to the equation? Look, all drugs have risks, but that is no reason to make them illegal. There are pills that reduce pain, alcohol has been proven to have health benefits, and marijuana can reduce stress and help with eye conditions. My point was that we need to look at this issue in perspective. If we have tobacco and alcohol legal, then we should be logical and legalize a drug that has actually been proven to do less damage than both of them. . http://www.nbcnews.com... Con's Contention 3: Marijuana is not entirely understood. My opponent says, "Again, if we both agree that alcohol is a harmful drug to society, what good will adding another harmful drug bring? " Again, why should a drug be illegal if more harmful drugs are legal? That is the question that I am getting at and many drug war proponents are dodging. Con's Contention 4: Marijuana is a gateway drug. In response to the study I provided that debunked this gateway theory, my opponent said, "it still supports my argument. It shows that most people who are using harder illicit drugs now initially started with marijuana. " The fallacy here is what I like to call, "correlation, not causation. " Just because most people that use harder drugs started with marijuana doesn't mean that marijuana directly leads to using harder drugs. There is correlation there, but there is no conclusive evidence that there is causation, which would be essential in order for m opponent's argument to be true. And I respect my opponent's party scenario in response to my black market argument. The difference between my argument and my opponent's is that mine shows the responsibility of the anti-drug laws for causing trouble in the black market. To the voters, I have made it crystal clear in this round and this debate that I have won all of the contentions. I want to thank my opponent for accepting this debate. It was interesting because I haven't debated this topic before.