Marijuana should be legalized for both Medicinal and Recreational use

1.The information you present on the effects of marijuana is definitely interesting, but I have to ask, would legalizing marijuana for recreational use have any impact on lowering the instances of driving while high? 2.Pro has very good points here. However, I believe that legalizing marijuana and allowing companies in the US to mass-produce it for recreational use would have a negative effect on the safety of the product. Pro makes a good point saying that marijuana is a clean plant, but so are oranges, apples, and grapes. You can eat these right off the plant. Now that food is mass-grown, however, each individual plant gets less important. Harmful pesticides are blanketed over the crops by plane. Additives are used to preserve plants and enhance flavor. Seeds are genetically modified to produce the types of fruits we EXPECT when we go to the supermarket – we want big juicy oranges and crunchy apples, and we want them to be the same every time we buy them. They should look perfect, taste perfect, be perfect. We want this enough that we are willing to allow these big companies to use potentially hazardous chemicals to meet our standards. We have a couple of options, of course, to avoid these potentially hazardous chemicals. We can buy local (or sometimes organic) foods that are guaranteed to be free of the chemicals, or we can grow our own crops. However, these options come at a premium. They are more expensive. People without the resources or time to eat healthy are forced into purchasing the cheap, often less healthy alternative. The same standard applies to the inebriants on the market today. More expensive cigarettes, like American Spirits, are additive free. Cheaper cigarettes are not. More expensive liquors are purer. With marijuana legalized, there is no question that the corporate mass-producers of marijuana would seek the cheapest way to produce and distribute their crop. If that means making it less healthy by using pesticides, preservatives, and additives, so be it. Now, you might argue that legalizing marijuana would mean local growers and home-growers could grow without risk, dropping prices and making the safe product more available. However, using the previous example, it is legal to grow fruit, and yet local products are still more expensive. This is because the mass-producers are extremely good at making their product as cheap and available as possible. There is no reason to assume that the mass-produced marijuana would not also be less expensive, forcing consumers without a lot of resources into purchasing that cheaper, less healthy alternative. Also, keeping marijuana illegal maintains that element of risk on the parts of both mass-producers and local growers. This means less concern is placed on making the product cheap than on finding viable ways to distribute the product. Therefore, illegal growers have less incentive to use harmful chemicals to cheapen the product. People are willing to pay a lot of money (and currently do pay a lot of money) in order to obtain marijuana, and prices are high mostly because of the risk involved. In my experience (and if Pro has counter examples, please bring them) I have never heard a dealer describe one product as being ‘safer' due to less chemical use than another. This is because, due to its illegality, dealers don't fly planes over their crops dumping pesticides. Keeping it hidden is the whole point. Legalizing it would open the plant up to a world of additives and pesticides that are currently of no interest to growers and distributers, as their focus is on keeping it out of view, not making it cheaper. Additionally, large companies invariably release different varieties of their product. This means using the cheapest chemical flavorings available. Marijuana is currently available in many varieties, but none that I know of are chemically flavored. If mass-producers were to flavor their products, which is an inevitable eventuality, they would seek to use the cheapest method available, which is chemicals, regardless of their health effects. 3.I agree that marijuana is a great source of income for these cartels. I am still not convinced, though, that legalizing marijuana would be the best way to stop the violence between these cartels. Black markets find a way to sustain themselves. Instead of putting a dent in these cartels' business by removing one of their sources of income, we should be more active in our assistance to Mexico in battling these cartels. This sounds hypocritical – after all, I have already conceded that the War on Drugs has been ineffective – but the difference is that we should be shifting our focus to eliminating the source of these drugs rather than discouraging its use with insane punishments for users. 4.As Pro said we generally agree here. However, the fact of the matter is that alcohol (and marijuana, actually) use is praised in this culture. I agree that the stoned pose an immeasurably lesser threat to society than drunks, but the fact is that legalizing marijuana is a way of endorsing its use. Currently there are countless medications that should by all rights be illegal that are instead prescribed by doctors. Is relying on these medications to solve our sleep issues, our depression, or our stress the best course of action? Absolutely not. Endorsing the use of drugs of any kind is a bad policy, as it gears our cultural attitude towards seeking release in the form of substances rather than the many beneficial alternatives to substance use. Why get an endorphin release from exercise when you can smoke a joint and feel twice as good? In that same mindset, why seek healthy ways to relieve stress and depression when you can pop a pill? In short, endorsing the use of drugs is bad for our cultural mindset. Thanks, and I look forward to your reply!