The legalization of Marijuana would strongly promote a healthy economy.

Thanks you for bringing this topic to the table. The question of marijuana legalization is a complex topic, but I will here try to show that, although there may be many good arguments for legalization, promoting a healthy economy is not one of those. My opponent made several assertions. I will here try to counter them one by one. 0. Marijuana makes you more focused. This assertion seems based on hearsay from marijuana users. The first thing to know about this is that you can never trust what a mind altering drug user says about the effects of a drug, simply because the drug alters the mind. You will find that any drug will be raised high (pun intended) by its users, who will claim that drugs are bad for you, with the exception of their preferred drug, be it marijuana, ecstasy or anything else. According to an ex-addict I talked to this is probably simple a side effect of the drug addition itself. As Marijuana has a wide-spread usage, second only to alcohol amongst mind-altering drugs, you will of course find a lot of people affected by this. Therefore, when we talk about the effects of drugs, we can't trust hearsay from the users, but we have to look towards scientific studies. And there I can't find any studies claiming that Marijuana makes you focus better. In fact, studies show that even at low doses you can get a mild confusion. (http://www.druglibrary.org...) 1. Being under the influence of Marijuana is FAR less dangerous than being under the influence of alcohol. Although it is true that Marijuana is less toxic than alcohol and is safer for that reason, saying that is is less dangerous to be under the influence is another thing. Both Alcohol and Marijuana will alter your state of mind, and make you prone to doing things you would not have done otherwise, including taking risks, and placing yourself in dangerous situations. 2. The distribution of Marijuana is already worldwide, and it being illegal only promotes crime. Saying that making something illegal promotes crime is in some way a tautology. The same thing can be said about anything. Murder and rape happens all around the world, and are illegal all around the world, and we could obviously lower the rate of crime by making this legal. But it would also increase the amount of rape an murder, and we don't want that. If our only goal was to lower criminality, then we should simply make everything legal. So this is a nonsensical meta-argument. 3. The Marijuana industry would be just as profitable as the tobacco industry, therefore promoting a strong economy, and it would ideally bring crime rates to an all-time low. The last part of the argument is just argument 2 again. The rest is however finally the statement of the economy. But economy doesn't work like that. Yes, the marijuana industry would be as profitable as the tobacco industry. But peoples incomes does not increase because you make an industry legal. They still have the same incomes as before, they would just spending more money on marijuana than on other things. So as the marijuana industry would rise, other industries would fall. A better economy is only something you get if you can increase the efficiency of the economy. Many new products do that by helping somebodys job go faster, like computers or better robots, etc. Other ways of improving the economy is to create these tools cheaper, so that you can get more productivity enhancing tools. But Marijuana is not a productivity enhancing tool. It's a recreational (or medical) drug. And it's well known to have negative effects on personal productivity. It makes you passive and relaxed, not more active or energetic. Used occasionally this will of course not effect how you do your job, that only happens when you get to be an addict, just like with any other drug. But legalisation is if anything going to increase the number of users, and thereby the number of addicts (the relationship between this has been shown in many studies). It is possible that this would be countered by lowering the amounts of addicts for other drugs, but at best, the economic effects of legalising marijuana would be unnoticeable. At worst they would be negative. But since they are not a tool to increase productivity, legalizing marijuana will not make the economy go any better.