Marijuana is harmless and is safer to use long-term than alcohol or tobacco.

Rebuttals: "A3 - Marijuana is not inherently harmful if used irresponsibly, excessively, or incorrectly" This is probably a typo but what you are saying is that if used irresponsibly, excessively or incorrectly marijuana is not harmful, while it would seem if used this way it probably would most definitely be harmful. "A4 - Only the improper or irresponsible usage of marijuana can even come close to being rendered harmful because marijuana has no proven adverse effects when used to a medical standard" I would like to remind pro we are not arguing for the medical use of marijuana but for use in general. "Thus, according to the medical community, the number of confirmed or proven deaths caused by marijuana can remain solidly stacked at zero. [4]" The lack of evidence and study in general for marijuana can largely be attributed to its illegality; most studies on are just beginning to emerge now that marijuana is becoming more popular. "B1 - It is medically implausible to correlate a death directly to marijuana usage" Once again, studies on the long term effects of marijuana are just beginning to be conducted, so saying that it is "medically implausible" is hyperbole. "B2 - 1400 people are proven to die of adverse medical effects caused by nicotine usage every day B3 - 75 people are proven to die of adverse medical effects caused by alcohol usage every day B4 - 0 people are proven to die of adverse medical effects caused by marijuana usage every day B5 - Marijuana is inherently less harmful than Alcohol or Nicotine" Your argument is that casual use of marijuana causes no harm and that abuse of marijuana may cause harm. Deaths caused by alcohol are almost solely due to over drinking and binge drinking, which is not casual use of alcohol. Therefore you cannot compare using marijuana casually to using alcohol abusively. The same goes for nicotine, where we consider that if someone where to smoke as much marijuana as a tobacco smoker smokes tobacco, there would be equally as many negative effects and long term deaths. I will now present my arguments. 1. Marijuana smoke is equally as bad if not worse than tobacco smoke. Marijuana contains 33 separate carcinogens that are introduced to the lungs when smoked [1]. Marijuana smoke also contains tar, and it leaves up to 4 times as much tar in the lungs as tobacco [1]. In fact, "marijuana smokers can have many of the same respiratory problems experienced by people who smoke tobacco. " Because of the deep and long inhales of unfiltered marijuana that smokers take, it can actually cause more irritation to the lungs than tobacco. 2. Marijuana, when taken casually by either smoking or consuming, causes abnormalities in the brain. A study was performed recently by researchers at Northwestern University"s Feinberg School of Medicine and Harvard Medical School on 40 young adult students from universities around Boston: 20 who smoked pot casually (up to 4 times a week) and 20 who never smoked pot at all. "Breiter (a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Feinberg School and co"senior author of the study) and his colleagues found that among all 20 casual marijuana smokers in their study " even the seven who smoked just one joint per week " the nucleus accumbens and amygdala showed changes in density, volume and shape. " [2] To quote the study, "These observations also demonstrate that fundamental relationships observed in covariance analyses among structural measures of controls are absent in marijuana users, suggesting that marijuana use may be associated with a disruption of neural organization in the a priori regions of the nucleus accumbens and amygdala. " [3] While I have further evidence to present, I believe I have to this point proven that casual use of marijuana is harmful to one's health and more so than casual use of alcohol or casual use of tobacco, both of which will not change the structure of the brain. I look forward to pro's rebuttals and arguments. Sources: [1] . http://www.lung.org... [2] . http://time.com... [3] . http://jn.sfn.org...