Debate: U.S. should put an end to war on drugs, legalize pot?
Side: End the war on drugs, legalize

First, you have done drugs yourself, because alcohol IS a drug. It's simply a legal one like tobacco. And as someone who has been around both and tried both and tried both in excess, it's my opinion that alcohol is a far more dangerous drug than marijuana. Marijuana does inflict harm to the self, but that's where it ends. People don't get high and then get belligerent, angry, and violent. They don't get high and drive overconfidently at 90 mph. I'm not saying driving under the influence of marijuana is by any means safe, but in comparison to alcohol, it is a lot safer. When you're under the influence of alcohol, you become overconfident in your abilities and drive without the normal care and caution you would have. Your vision is also blurred and reaction times slowed. Under marijuana, again your reaction times are slowed, but unlike using alcohol, when you drive under the influence of marijuana you drive with more care and caution than normal. It's the positive effect of paranoia. Furthermore, you can overdose on alcohol and die from it, which is an impossibility with marijuana. It's interesting that you bring up prohibition and then state that you're afraid it will cause problems because people will become "addicted" to it. Prohibition is an excellent example to bring up. What did history teach us about prohibition? That it doesn't work. People will always self medicate, and so long as the substances they are using are absent of any serious effects, they will continue using those substances. In fact, legalization of marijuana may cut down on the "gateway" effect of the drug (though I don't buy the gateway argument in and of itself, but more on that later). Many people try marijuana after being taught by the government's propaganda what a terrible awful drug it is. Once they try it and learn the truth, that it's very similar to alcohol, with a few key differences, they begin to question the government's authority on other drugs as well. "If they lied to me about marijuana, maybe cocaine's not all that bad either." On the other hand, let me say this to the gateway argument. Tobacco and alcohol are the number one and number two gateway drugs. So if we call marijuana a gateway, let us only do so after calling out the top two. As far as medicinal marijuana goes, you've obviously either done little to no research on the topic or you lack compassion. You state that cancer patients use it to numb the pain of treatment and to make them hungry in order to counteract the effects of nausea from treatment. I ask, what is wrong with that? It seems that if people are going through a very painful and difficult treatment (that may not even succeed) they might be entitled to pain relief and some semblance of a normal life (i.e. being able to eat normally). Nobody claims that marijuana "cures" anything, it's pain medication, much like morphine, demerol, vicodin, etc. AND it's natural. No pharmaceutical company has mixed in chemical compounds to create it. I get terrible menstrual cycles, they've always been awful and have gotten worse as I've gotten a bit older. The only thing that successfully treats the pain and discomfort I feel during those first two days is, you guessed it, marijuana. Prohibition has been tried...for seventy years. And rather than reduce marijuana use, now nearly half of the country admits to having tried the substance. We waste money on criminalization of marijuana and we create crime. If marijuana were available legally, drug dealers would be out of business, and users would no longer have to be jailed at your expense. The government would be able to tax the substance and make a pretty penny off of people's use of it as well. There's no proof that use of marijuana would increase if prohibition ended. It would make us all safer and save us a ton of money. I'm sick of the hypocrisy of alcohol-users in regards to marijuana. If you want to oppose it, fine, but you sure as hell better oppose it's uglier, scarier brother, Alcohol, first.