Legalization of recreational marijuana in the U.S. would benefit the economy

Rebuttal 1: Employment My argument has very little to do with the connection with alcohol in this case. In fact, I will concede that there are major differences. However, what I did bring up was the connection between marijuana and unemployment. I have provided clear correlations which my opponent has yet to address. Not only this, but my opponent has brought up a red herring by including the link between alcohol and unemployment. However, allow me to address another part of your argument. You state that my argument hinges on the fact that all people on marijuana would be abusers. This is actually becoming a reality. If we were to observe the impacts of legalization and use we would be able to come to a conclusion, which is what I will do. According to the National Bureau of Economic Research in 2011, the likeliness for abuse in states that simply legalized drugs for medical use will increase by 12%. We would be seeing more people addicted and trying marijuana for the first time. As shown before with the high correlation between marijuana use and unemployment, we would be seeing obvious signs of endangerment to our economy. . http://www.nber.org... Rebuttal 2: Health care My opponent has yet to attack anything but my one source. This can be easily supplemented with another. “The authors note that the 6 to 9 percent increase in frequency of adult binge drinking, along with an estimated increase in the probability of simultaneous use of marijuana and alcohol of 15 to 22 percent, suggests that legalization could result in "considerable economic and social costs from downstream health care expenditures and productivity loss. " This is from the first citation in this argument. I have already efficiently explained why healthcare prices will increase substantially and why covering everyone with an addiction who happened to relapse or need some sort of medical service due to their usage would be costly. However, my opponent has offered a rebuttal about costs. While I do admit that the original statistic I cited was flawed in the way I used it, I will not say that the effect on health care costs would be minor. The symptoms of marijuana use include heart diseases according to a previous source I used in my first argument as well as increased likeliness of binge drinking, according to the only statistic used so far in this argument. My opponent has yet to prove that my effects will be minor given the fact that my evidence and explanation suggests otherwise. Rebuttal 3: Taxes My opponent has stated that the tax revenue coming from legalized marijuana will be huge. However, we need to see that if there are more users, there are going to be more people addicted and abusing marijuana, which will decrease the economy. Not only this, but with the health costs I mentioned before, we can see that the costs far outweigh the amount of tax revenue we receive. Not only this, my opponent has not provided a model that would accurately show the effects of legalizing marijuana for the general populous. In short, we see that regardless of the tax revenue from the marijuana, we see that the loss of workers would prove more substantial as we see the loss of the already disappearing private sector. Not only this, but considering our current deficit, it is unlikely that the government would use that revenue for anything important to the American people that does not line their pockets with money. Keep in mid this as well, simply increasing revenue for the government will not always increase economic gain for the people, who are most important in the debate because of the previous fact stated, that the government does not usually have the working class in mind when enacting economic reform. Also, my opponent’s counter plan involving funding toward entitlement programs does not work. If we were to fund entitlement programs we would be seeing no gain whatsoever economically. According to the Cato Institute statistic I used earlier, we already spend over 600 billion dollars annually to try and counter poverty to no avail. This system is inefficient ad will not be the best system possible to build an economy. Regardless of what revenue is generated, let us negate. Rebuttal 4: Prison I will explain why my opponent is right and wrong at the same time. My opponent is right in the way he states that prison costs are high. However, he is not right to say that the best way to fix this system involves completely legalizing marijuana. This is because all of my other points stand and show the effects of legalizing marijuana on a base level. Instead, we should decriminalize marijuana by reducing sentences and providing treatment for those with drug addictions. This would not incentivize the use of marijuana, but we could have more savings from the prison system. My opponent has finally said that the therapy mentioned in my first rebuttal is expensive. That may seem true until you observe the actual cost from the Justice Policy Institute which shows that incarceration costs 20,000 dollars annually, while treatment only costs 4,000 dollars. Not only this, but according to the National Institute of Justice, behavioral therapy is effective at reducing recidivism for both juveniles and adults. . http://www.justicepolicy.org... . http://www.nij.gov... Rebuttal 5: Crime/Corp My opponent is not sure of what type of programs I mean when I say that I want to make drugs seem less appealing. This is understandable, however, the ones I am talking about are the ones that target children at a young age in school. This program is easy to start and fund due to the fact that we have already started these programs in middle and high schools that target this problem as is. We also would provide therapy which, as shown above, is cost effective. We would not use the D. A. R. E model as it is ineffective, and instead we would come up with a new approach to drug education that is cost effective, like many other programs. If we were to look at an article from the University of North Carolina, we would see the following: “Proven programs are available, such as Reconnecting Youth, Life Skills Training, Project ALERT, Project STAR, Alcohol Misuse Prevention and Project Northland, Hallfors said. These and other good programs offer schools a growing choice of effective drug prevention and education curricula. ” . http://www.unc.edu... Since very few schools utilize effective drug education, we would expand these programs instead to make the more universally used. Finally, we need to realize that by reducing the grasp of marijuana on today’s youth and by incentivizing therapy, we would be growing our private sector and helping thousands, if not millions of people. Rebuttal 6: Forgot point I was going to get to it here since I was running out of space for my argument. What my opponent claims is that by legalizing marijuana, we could produce it and expand our foreign market to other developed nations. This is unlikely. My opponent has stated that a domino effect will occur with drugs being legalized everywhere in the developed world. This is an assertion that is unsupported by any evidence, and my opponent has claimed it will just happen. We have already legalized marijuana in some states, yet this has not caused any country to legalize it themselves. Not only this, but America’s popularity is decreasing with our actions in the Middle East and foreign affairs in general. Thus, not many countries are going to be looking toward the US for policy.