Marijuana Should Be Legalized

In regards to where marijuana should be legalized, theoretically it should be legal everywhere but this debate will focus on legalization in America. In regards to legalization, marijuana should be regulated similarly to alcohol and cigarettes. Beta has done an excellent job of displaying how marijuana is bad for you. For the rest of this debate, I will even agree that marijuana and most other drugs are more certainly bad for you, but this alone does not justify keeping them illegal. First, less address the philosophical arguments regarding the legalization of drugs. I originally came across these ideas from philosophy professor Michael Huemer. If you would like to read his original paper "America's Unjust Drug War," as well as his other published papers, please visit . http://spot.colorado.edu.... America is a libertarian state, and arguably most other countries SHOULD be libertarian states. One of the core components of liberty is, theoretically, you are allowed to do whatever you want as long as it does not violate the rights of others. This means that even if you do something that is bad for you, you should be permitted to do it. For example, you have the right to sit on your couch for months on end, eating junk food, and altogether alienating yourself from your friends and family. This mimicks the stereotypical behavior of marijuana users, but most people would nonetheless say you have the right to become a "couch potato. " It is perfectly fine to try to help that person and tell them what their doing is bad for the physical and social health, but nonetheless you he or she should be permitted to become a couch potato. Likewise, marijuana (and most illicit drugs) are bad for you, but as long as they are not 100% guaranteed to make you harm others, you should be permitted to take them. Next, let's assume we are coming from a care based perspective. This means that the government and other people can be legally justified in preventing you from undertaking an action that is bad for you. This theory is problematic, since it could theoretically justify preventing people from drinking coffee in the mornings. However for the sake of argument let's say the government and others are permitted to directly intervene and prevent you from doing bad things to yourself. Now we are faced with the difficult prospect of determining what is bad enough for you to merit intervention. If marijuana is bad enough to require intervention, then surely we must also prevent people from drinking, smoking, playing football, boxing, skiing, and probably other activities since these are all arguably worse for you health than marijuana is. Now let's say we've somehow still justified keeping marijuana illegal. As a result of keeping marijuana (as well as most other drugs) illegal, we are permitting the direct funding of the illicit drug trade. This means that instead of distributing cannabis legally and collecting the tax revenue for schools, roads, and hospitals, we are indirectly funding the drug wars that result in American citizens (and children) getting killed by rival gangs fighting for distribution rights, as well as the drug wars in Mexico, Columbia, and South America to name a few. See: . http://www.progress.org... . http://projects.latimes.com... . http://www.huffingtonpost.com... This prohibition of drugs has created similar results to the prohibition of alcohol, which funded crimes and gave Al Capone his power base. After alcohol was legalized, we actually saw a DECREASE in alcohol related crimes and alcohol abuse. Similarly, Portugal's drug decriminalization program resulted in a DECREASE in drug abuse and drug overdoses, since people were more willing to seek help without fear of going to jail. . http://www.albany.edu... . http://www.spiegel.de... Next, the sheer number of convicts we arrest yearly based on marijuana charges every year is flooding our prison systems, costing taxpayers millions and sometimes requiring us to release other, more violent criminals early to make room for the practically harmless cannabis users. See . http://norml.org... Therefore, due to the fact that more people are literally being killed as a result of keeping marijuana (as well as other drugs) illegal, because of the sheer tax its placing on our government's resources, because there aren't many soundproof philosophical arguments to justify preventing marijuana from being illegal, because we can actually decrease marijuana and illicit drug use by legalizing (or at least decriminalizing) these drugs, marijuana should be legalized and other drugs should be legalized or at least decriminalized.