Quote:
Originally Posted by Kevin
1) It costs a crapton of money to enforce the law.
2) It costs another crapton of money to warehouse nonviolent (drugs only) offenders.
3) Keeping marijuana illegal allows organized crime to have a major source of revenue which leads to violence and in Mexico's case, government instability which leads to a lot of deaths and bad stuff which wouldn't happen if the drug was being sold legitimately.
4) It's a low cost way for many people with serious ailments to deal with those ailments without the use of expensive drugs which may have undesirable side-effects (as far as I know, and I've never used the stuff, so I don't have much frame of reference, marijuana doesn't have any undesirable side effects, bad interactions or anything which might give rise to concern).
5) Constant marijuana use isn't nearly as bad for you as continuous alcohol use.
ETA: 6) In the Netherlands, where the stuff is quasi-legal, there is just about no problem with meth and other drug use is drastically lower.
7) An extension of #6: Many terrorist groups and other international bad guys make a lot of money producing or transporting other drugs for use in the United States. Legalization of marijuana would be a huge financial blow.
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This.
I'm tired of pot smokers and dealers taking up all the cushy spaces in our prisons because of ridiculous mandatory sentencing policies. I'd much rather save room for murderers and rapists who should be serving sentences far longer than they are right now due to space constraints, wouldn't you?
True story: in college, when I took summer school at U-DUB, we had to write a paper on a legal issue that impacts local and federal government. I chose the legalization of marijuana. Cheerfulgreek, I don't want to hurt your delicate sensibilities, but you really have to grow up. POT is not what is killing America. There is actually no statistically significant data (at least there wasn't when I wrote my paper) proving marijuana causes any long-term health problems. Alcohol, tobacco and prescription drugs cause far more damage.
California, Oregon and Washington already legalized marijuana growing and use for medical purposes. The only problems I've ever heard involving it are when the police "bust" a growing operation that they think is illegal but actually turns out to be licensed! I'm not sure why you think increased access to pot would equal increased use - that certainly is not the case for cigarettes! It reminds me of the old argument that giving kids sex ed and condoms promotes promiscuity, which we know is false.