[QUOTE="gaming25"][QUOTE="sandbox3d"]
Vote yes of course.
The only reason why Marijuana is illegal in the US is because we are living in the shadow of old propaganda and over the years it simply became imbedded into our "culture" to think it is bad.
Marijuana may not be good for you, but in comparrison to alchohol and prescription meds (even some over the counter meds) it is completely harmless. Even cigarettes will drain your health much faster than some herb.
People who smoke weed tend to just want to chill at home. You don't ever hear about some guy smoking a joint and then going home to beat his wife and kids. You don't hear about people smoking weed and going out to commit violent crimes, or causing deadly wrecks. Marijuana is not addictive and nobody has ever overdosed on THC.
Its really just one of those silly laws that never went away. Sending a person to jail, or prison over a Marijuana charge is like modern day Witch burning. Handing out extremely harsh punishments due to ignorance and misinformation.
The fact that Marijuana use, possession and sale are handled as criminal offenses actually cause more problems for our society, not less. You end up sending non-violent offenders off to the big house with murderers, rapists, real drug dealers etc. etc.. and they come out worse than when they went in. Plus you are wasting tax dollars on housing the non-violent offenders. Also as long as Marijuana is illegal then people must often go to places where other real drugs are being sold in order to buy a harmless bag of herb. This puts people in dangerous situations and they are more likely to get involved with other drugs they would have avoided had the weed been available at a regular store.
If you do away with the illegal aspect of Marijuana then you don't have the violence that comes along with an illegal market. It would be one less product on the streets for drug dealers to be kicking in doors and shooting people over. On the flip side the Govt. could make a killing off of taxing Marijuana in its consumable form and also manufacture endless products out of hemp.
I could go on forever really.
I see so many reasons for it to be legal.
I see no reasons for it to be illegal.
But I'm up for discussion if anyone disagrees.
sandbox3d
Well I disagree vehetmently. First of all marijuana causes very harmful effects to your body ESPECIALLY down the future. Cigarettes will not cause the amount of harm that marijuana causes. And per take, marijuana is way more harful than alchohol or perscription meds. It is when you ABUSE those will there be terrible concequences. Also, if you are going to bring up drunk driving, comparing harm X to harm Y is always flawed since it is both harmful. The difference is that with marijuana, you already abuse it the moment you take it. So you cant even regulate it.Ehh.....huh? Anything to back any of that up? Are you seriously going to tell me that all these people hooked on codine, Oxycontin, xanax, and other manufactured (proven to be addictive) drugs are better off than Marijuana users? People that get hooked those drugs are actually chemically addicted and suffer with-drawls when trying to quit. Those people lose families, jobs and sometimes even there lives to those drugs. Same for alcohol. There is millions of dollars put into recover programs for those people, but not for Marijuana users because Marijuana is not addictive, nor deadly.
Cigarettes are filled with all kinds of unnatural additives and literal poisons. Plus, unlike Marijuana, cigarettes are very addictive. Also a cigarette smoker will go through a pack a day (20 smokes), while a weed smoker might smoke a joint or two.
And what very harmful side affects are associated with Marijuana? Laziness? Munchies? lol. Seriously give me something besides a hollow statement here bud. The largest risk I see from Marijuana use is the chance of getting lung cancer. Even so, it does not even begin to compare to the risk that cigarette smokers are at.
I'm all for discussion, but you are basically just reiterating old, baseless propaganda.
If you have some actual information, then by all means educate me brother.
agreed 100%
as for the whole "more harmful than cigarettes" argument, that is if you abuse marijuana; in short, you need to smoke pot like a person with a bad cigarette habit, which would be roughly a pack of cigarettes a day, or about 30 joints of marijuana. I know a lot of potheads and they do not smoke 10% of that, and I dont imagine them increasing their intake considering they get as much pot as they could ever want already. This is, of course, not including the hundreds of methods of consuming marijuana (vaporizer, baked goods, incorporated into foods, ingested via pill form, etc.) that are far less harmful than smoking it.
Also, considering "harm x" vs "harm y", it is a totally legitimate argument. If I were to try to convince a person scared of flying in a commerical airplane, one of my arguments would be that you are at greater risk of dying in a car crash than you are dying in a plane crash. When the stats are there to back up risk analysis, it is incredibly relevant. When marijuana is legalized, I predict a huge number of high-risk pill poppers will transfer to consuming low-risk marijuana instead.
In conclusion, when people arguing against legalization cite tobacco use to support their argument, you know they are grasping at straws. With an average death toll over 400,000 resulting from tobacco smoking, and costing the US almost 170 billion dollars per year in health care costs, you gotta have some extremely skewed views on the situation
As sandbox said, we are all for a constructive discussion on the matter. Just come back when your argument is based on logic, without citing propoganda, unfounded fear, what Mom and Dad told you, religion, etc.
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