Legalization of Marijuana

Thank you for your response. Addressing your first point about marijuana leading users towards the use of other drugs, while many people use this as their main point in arguing against marijuana it is actually a myth. The relationship you are speaking of is more of a correlation than a causal relationship. Marijuana is the most popular and in many cases the easiest drug to get within the United States, while other drugs such as Cocaine, Heroin, or LSD are less common and are not used by nearly as many people. The fact is that people who use these uncommon drugs are likely to have used marijuana at some time in their life. It is simply a myth that people who use marijuana will eventually want to use other drugs. While I will admit that detecting marijuana in the system of a driver is a tricky subject, a blood test will be able to tell with the highest level of accuracy in order to determine whether or not the driver had marijuana in their system and how long it was there for. Urine samples would also show if a driver had marijuana in their system but the problem with that is that a small amount of marijuana can be detectable through urine for quite a long time. For your third point you stated that legalizing marijuana would make it easier for children to gain access to the drug but I actually feel that the opposite would happen. In legalizing marijuana within our borders our government can also control better who it will be sold too. Drug dealers today do not need to ask for an I.D. from the person they are selling weed too but if it were sold in stores those people would have to verify the age of the person attempting to purchase it. With that our government could instate a zero tolerance policy; meaning that any distributor caught selling marijuana to minors would face heavy fines, imprisonment, and completely lose the right to distribute the drug. Considering the fact that legalizing marijuana presents a great deal of business to these distributors they will take the necessary precautions to do everything they can to keep marijuana out of the hands of children. Considering your fourth point, I feel that using marijuana charges to keep people who are suspected of committing other crimes is a complete violation of their rights and that is not how our legal system works. If there is not enough evidence to convict someone of a crime than using harsh penalties for marijuana related charges to keep them off the streets is completely immoral. If there is not proper and sufficient evidence that these people committed the crimes; maybe it is because they did not commit the crime, regardless of whether or not they bought or sold marijuana. Selling marijuana may be a crime, for now, within the United States but it is not an automatic sign that these people will commit other crimes and our government can not enforce harsh penalties simply because it is believed that this will prevent these people from committing murder or rape. For your fifth point I can only say that if it is our government job to prevent us from harmful substances than our government is quite hypocritical in allowing the sale of tobacco, alcohol, and even caffeine but not that of marijuana. Personally I would rather the government not make my decisions for me and instead educate myself decide how to live my life. Considering the fact that hard evidence exists that marijuana does have potentially positive effects on users and the fact that the negative effects that you have brought up in this debate are not exclusive to marijuana; I see no reason why our government has not over turned the laws against the use of Marijuana. I believe that our government does have the responsibility to protect the citizens of the United States but that responsibility should not take away the freedom to choose what or what not to put into our bodies.