Ending The Drug War

I don't think that its a very strange thing to say that the war on drugs harms far more people than the drugs it tries to eliminate. With the drug war in Mexico (if you haven't head about what has been going on its truly appalling) taking a gruesome turn thousands have died in the past year and ending the criminal effort in the war on drugs will help to prevent these kinds of things from happening by taking away crucial funding from criminal organizations, without the funds from drugs to power their other illegal endeavors they will be severely weakened and less capable of obtaining weapons not to mention with less money in these criminal enterprises there will be less of an attraction for new members to join in.

According to the AMA about 17,000 deaths are caused each year in the US directly and indirectly by illicit drug use. More people in fact die from adverse reactions to prescription drugs than illegal drugs at roughly 32,000 deaths per year and alcohol kills around 85,000 people every year, a staggering number. Of course the biggest killer is cigarettes with nearly 400,000 deaths annually.

Now in all of this it is important to understand that two illegal drugs account for more deaths in the users than any other, cocaine and heroin. The third highest killer is amphetamines with about 1/9 of the deaths caused by heroin.

Right now, the primary focus of the war on drugs is marijuana, truly a great waste of our resources because if we are going to try to eliminate drug use, we should probably start with the ones that are actually dangerous (and addictive) and don't have an absolutely massive potential for a legal market that could benefit the economy by creating jobs and revenue for the government.

Right now the prison system in the US has more non-violent drug offenders than persons being held for any other charge and regardless of their situation in life they are simply thrown into prison, their families devastated, their lives ruined, and not necessarily because of their drug use, but rather because of the laws against those drugs. This is a great injustice, and while not everyone in the prison system was a productive member of society beforehand, for that that are it is an even greater injustice.

The proper way to treat the use of drugs is as an issue of health, not crime. The most effective means of controlling drug abuse is education, not reduction of the drug supply and not destroying the lives of responsible drug users.

That said I am not positive that legalization can work for all drugs. Heroin and cocaine would almost certainly be better off with decreased availability, but its important to understand that the key to controlling the use of these drugs is not by banning them, but education. Drugs like marijuana, LSD, ecstasy, and psilocybin are quite safe. And ecstasy which is often cut with other drugs like amphetamines would be a LOT less dangerous if it was actually regulated.

http://www.briancbennett.com/charts/death/real-story.htm
http://www.drugwarfacts.org/cms/?q=node/27
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/no...r-10000-dead-mexican-drug-war-violence-ebbing

We definitely need to legalize drugs before ending the drug war. I live right on the border (literally, it would take me 30 minutes to ride my bike to Juarez, which is pretty much the center of the violence) and I can say for sure that if we end the drug war before we can legally buy previously illegal drugs the killings will come to America.

Or, more importantly, where I live.

Well by ending the Drug War I do mean fully legalizing and regulating most drugs, and at least decriminalizing or creating some novel method for the regulation of some of the more dangerous drugs like heroin and cocaine.

Well yeah, I got that from the OP. I was just agreeing with you.

I believe you're absolutely right upon the issue of marijuana. The thing I hate about the current way people are fighting drugs is that they're trying to hard to kill the supply and not enough to kill the demand! Really, if there's demand, there will be supply. That's why America is such a great place for illegal drug imports, because we have a ****load of demand. >_< 2 years of health won't help decrease this demand. the Gov't needs to legalize and regulate marijuana, followed by more health classes to decrease the demand. Really, DARE wasn't supposed to be a 2 year program... =/

I don't even see why it's necessary to decrease the demand for illegal drugs. Just make them all legal, it's apparent that having them illegal isn't actually stopping many people from using them.

Jam Stunna said:

I don't even see why it's necessary to decrease the demand for illegal drugs. Just make them all legal, it's apparent that having them illegal isn't actually stopping many people from using them.

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Well I think its important to reduce the number of people addicted to hard drugs. People who regularly use some of the safer illegal drugs doesnt really create a problem, but we should try to reduce the number people who really will go through extreme measures to feed their addiction and that means a reduction in demand for harder drugs. Of course throwing these drug users into jail really doesnt solve the problem, but hard drugs really do create problems.

manhunter098 said:

Well I think its important to reduce the number of people addicted to hard drugs. People who regularly use some of the safer illegal drugs doesnt really create a problem, but we should try to reduce the number people who really will go through extreme measures to feed their addiction and that means a reduction in demand for harder drugs. Of course throwing these drug users into jail really doesnt solve the problem, but hard drugs really do create problems.

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Okay, I agree with you on that.

If you legalized the drugs that never directly caused death, LSD, Mushrooms, and Weed, the economy would and everything would actually be better.

First off, drug dealers would be out of business off the streets, and that would decrease crime. If I am going to ever buy drugs, it'd be from a local grower who knows what he is doing. Secondly, with weed being so easy to grow, mushrooms too, it would put a cap on their prices because if they get too high, people can grow their own. Finally, it'd bring down the prices on tobacco and alcohol because it'd have to sell cheap, and those alternatives would lose customers if they stayed too high. Tobacco and Alcohol are both known for leading to death, so as a consumer, I'd be more inclined to go for weed of the three.

Also, legalizing these will reduce the high import prices/illegal activity with them.

I remember reading something that high class drugs by themselves (cocaine, heroine), don't pay for the shipment costs. Instead, it's Marijuana that provides the money that makes those things possible, and that if we took our marijuana then they couldn't import a lot of those heavy drugs.

The only thing I would see wrong with legalizing drugs, is then allot of people, including grade school students, would just randomly start smoking in school. It wouldn't be all that noticable since people OD from Tylenol.

So I am completely for the legalization of drugs. Like during Prohibition, the problem wasn't reduced or eliminated for the most part until it was repealed so the same goes with drugs.

zrky said:

The only thing I would see wrong with legalizing drugs, is then allot of people, including grade school students, would just randomly start smoking in school. It wouldn't be all that noticable since people OD from Tylenol.

So I am completely for the legalization of drugs. Like during Prohibition, the problem wasn't reduced or eliminated for the most part until it was repealed so the same goes with drugs.

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You cant kill yourself smoking weed and who says kids would be allowed, right now its easier for kids to get weed than it is for them to get alcohol, with the same restrictions on it as alcohol I would think the availability to our youth would be about the same as well.

zrky said:

The only thing I would see wrong with legalizing drugs, is then allot of people, including grade school students, would just randomly start smoking in school. It wouldn't be all that noticable since people OD from Tylenol.

So I am completely for the legalization of drugs. Like during Prohibition, the problem wasn't reduced or eliminated for the most part until it was repealed so the same goes with drugs.

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I think I have mentioned this in the temp hall, but schools don't have the same rules as the law. In Oregon you are allowed to smoke once you hit the age of 18, but that doesn't mean you can run around school grounds with cigarettes. You have to keep them in your car off campus, or not bring them at all. The school will confiscate any cigarettes they find, and that's expensive if they take a whole pack. It would be the same situation with marijuana, you would be able to smoke it, but you still won't be able to keep it on school grounds.

Narukari said:

I think I have mentioned this in the temp hall, but schools don't have the same rules as the law. In Oregon you are allowed to smoke once you hit the age of 18, but that doesn't mean you can run around school grounds with cigarettes. You have to keep them in your car off campus, or not bring them at all. The school will confiscate any cigarettes they find, and that's expensive if they take a whole pack. It would be the same situation with marijuana, you would be able to smoke it, but you still won't be able to keep it on school grounds.

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I didin't think of it that way, I mostly mentioned schools, because i see allot of people at my school, who just randomly smoke on campus. So I suppose it would be the same as taking a lighter to school, but instead you can just get a quick dose of crack from your pocket without anyone noticing, and they can't do much about it legally so no more juvy. That is the only problem I see with legalizing. Everything else would be solved with legalization so again, I am all for the legalization to end the drug wars.

Well, zrky, you're forgetting where we live. It's not uncommon for me to see people walk back into school after lunch that have obviously taken a few hits.

Remember, it wouldn't be hard for either of us to get pretty much ANY illegal drug. Of course it will be more common for this type of thing to be going on right next to the center of the commotion.

There will always be a drug war. Small ones, but it will be there.

Ok, I realize everyone is against me here, and I will probably be bombarded with tons of arguments from more experienced debaters. But it'll be a good learning experience, I guess.

manhunter098 said:

According to the AMA about 17,000 deaths are caused each year in the US directly and indirectly by illicit drug use. More people in fact die from adverse reactions to prescription drugs than illegal drugs at roughly 32,000 deaths per year and alcohol kills around 85,000 people every year, a staggering number. Of course the biggest killer is cigarettes with nearly 400,000 deaths annually.

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Well, first of all, "tobacco and alcohol are legal, so why not all drugs" isn't really a valid argument. They're only legal because we can't efficiently illegalize them; we've already tried the prohibition amendment.


Also, in terms of the prescription drugs causing more deaths:

The person who took them should have been aware of the possible effects on them. Plus, illegal drugs harm those other than the user when they are taken. While these deaths are unfortunate, they were all accidents that could not have been prevented and were risks that the user was willing to take. To compare, someone who is killed by someone who is high on a drug (i.e. through DUI) is in no way affiliated with the drug and never made the conscious decision to risk their health.

In addition, this isn't a fair comparison. The illegal drugs are, well, illegal. Not as many people use them as prescription drugs.

Also, your source (the third one) said there had been about 10,475 deaths in about 2.5 years in mexico (4190 per year). Alcohol, you said, caused 85,000 deaths in the US in one year. What I'm getting at is by legalizing these drugs, they'll likely end up like alcohol. If legalized, it would be open to "casual" use and likely end up causing similar amounts of deaths. So what's worse: 85,000 deaths per year, or 4190?

manhunter098 said:

Now in all of this it is important to understand that two illegal drugs account for more deaths in the users than any other, cocaine and heroin. The third highest killer is amphetamines with about 1/9 of the deaths caused by heroin.

Right now, the primary focus of the war on drugs is marijuana, truly a great waste of our resources because if we are going to try to eliminate drug use, we should probably start with the ones that are actually dangerous (and addictive) and don't have an absolutely massive potential for a legal market that could benefit the economy by creating jobs and revenue for the government.

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What do you mean by "eliminate drug use?" We're never going to completely get rid of them, and they're already illegal.

manhunter098 said:

Right now the prison system in the US has more non-violent drug offenders than persons being held for any other charge and regardless of their situation in life they are simply thrown into prison, their families devastated, their lives ruined, and not necessarily because of their drug use, but rather because of the laws against those drugs. This is a great injustice, and while not everyone in the prison system was a productive member of society beforehand, for that that are it is an even greater injustice.

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First of all, by taking the drug, they are risking other people's lives, even if they hadn't been violent yet. Most alcohol users aren't violent, yet there are still plenty of deaths resulting from it every year. And arguing that their life will be ruined isn't viable; everyone thrown in jail essentially has their life ruined, including murderers and rapists. What if they have a family? Should we feel sorry for them too?

In terms of being thrown in jail just for possession, I'm kind of on the fence there. I would still want it to be illegal, but I'm not sure if jail time is necessary. But even if the person hasn't used it yet, they could be planning to sell it, which is a problem. Maybe just a relatively small fine and some mandatory community service hours would suffice.

Why would the person knowingly break the law anyway? Currently, the drugs are illegal; whether or not things are the way they should be, citizens shouldn't break the law. If they think the drugs should be legal, then they should join a protest group or something instead of breaking the law.

manhunter098 said:

The proper way to treat the use of drugs is as an issue of health, not crime. The most effective means of controlling drug abuse is education, not reduction of the drug supply and not destroying the lives of responsible drug users.

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Even if the drugs should be legal, someone is NEVER "responsible" when breaking the law. And kids are already being educated about the harmful effects on drugs, so legalizing them serves no purpose.

manhunter098 said:

That said I am not positive that legalization can work for all drugs. Heroin and cocaine would almost certainly be better off with decreased availability, but its important to understand that the key to controlling the use of these drugs is not by banning them, but education. Drugs like marijuana, LSD, ecstasy, and psilocybin are quite safe. And ecstasy which is often cut with other drugs like amphetamines would be a LOT less dangerous if it was actually regulated.

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Define "safe". How are they safe when they cause DUI deaths?

Also, taking the position of "education is better than banning" isn't really a valid argument. People will obviously still use the drugs even if we educate them about the risks; just look at alcohol and tobacco.

KrazyGlue said:

Well, first of all, "tobacco and alcohol are legal, so why not all drugs" isn't really a valid argument. They're only legal because we can't efficiently illegalize them; we've already tried the prohibition amendment.

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The most important thing that I would like to point out is that you claim we cannot effectively ban Tobacco and Alcohol so they must be legal, but the fact is that we have not effectively banned any illegal drugs, the availability is there, and attacking the consumer base of those drugs is the wrong policy decision because it destroys families and creates unnecessary violence.

In addition, this isn't a fair comparison. The illegal drugs are, well, illegal. Not as many people use them as prescription drugs.

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Well and the prescription drugs are advertised down everyone's throats, passed by the FDA even though they are not really all that safe. For god sakes, a side effect of depression medication in adolescents can be thoughts of suicide. These are the kinds of drugs we are letting doctors prescribe.

Also, your source (the third one) said there had been about 10,475 deaths in about 2.5 years in mexico (4190 per year). Alcohol, you said, caused 85,000 deaths in the US in one year. What I'm getting at is by legalizing these drugs, they'll likely end up like alcohol. If legalized, it would be open to "casual" use and likely end up causing similar amounts of deaths. So what's worse: 85,000 deaths per year, or 4190?

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You are making the assumption that drug use will actually rise with the elimination of prohibition, in Portugal however this is not true, how do you know that drug use will actually increase in the United States because of legalization? Doesn't this lack of correlation between drug policy and drug use mean anything?

What do you mean by "eliminate drug use?" We're never going to completely get rid of them, and they're already illegal.

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Well society tends to detest drug use, even though I don't really harbor many problems with it. But if society is going to try to stop drug use, it should look for a new method rather than continuing to use a tyrannical and oppressive method that doesn't work.

First of all, by taking the drug, they are risking other people's lives, even if they hadn't been violent yet. Most alcohol users aren't violent, yet there are still plenty of deaths resulting from it every year. And arguing that their life will be ruined isn't viable; everyone thrown in jail essentially has their life ruined, including murderers and rapists. What if they have a family? Should we feel sorry for them too?

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No, they are not risking anyone's life. The context of the drug use is what determines if they are endangering anyone's life. Furthermore people using drugs responsibly are not in the situation where they would turn violent because of drug use, it is drug addiction that leads to violence and drug addiction is a health problem, not a criminal issue.

Why would the person knowingly break the law anyway? Currently, the drugs are illegal; whether or not things are the way they should be, citizens shouldn't break the law. If they think the drugs should be legal, then they should join a protest group or something instead of breaking the law.

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When breaking a law doesn't hurt anyone around you then you shouldn't be punished for it, breaking the law is sometimes the only way to bring attention to something.

Even if the drugs should be legal, someone is NEVER "responsible" when breaking the law. And kids are already being educated about the harmful effects on drugs, so legalizing them serves no purpose.

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Its quite easy to make sure you are responsible when breaking the law, make sure people dont get hurt. The education provided to children about drugs is appallingly inaccurate in the United States, this can create distrust of all the information provided in the education course, and have the effect of making children think that some drugs are safer than the government told them. Of course proper drug education should come from the family.

Define "safe". How are they safe when they cause DUI deaths?

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Assessing the actual impact of marijuana on drivers is only possible through surveys. Blood tests are almost never done and urine tests offer only circumstantial evidence to marijuana use when driving. I know for a fact though that marijuana creates significantly less impairment than alcohol. Regulating ecstasy would allow people to know if it is pure MDMA or if it is mixed with other more damaging and physically addictive drugs. The same would apply to Heroin and Cocaine in regards to their purity. They truly would become safer drugs to use.

Also, taking the position of "education is better than banning" isn't really a valid argument. People will obviously still use the drugs even if we educate them about the risks; just look at alcohol and tobacco.

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I would like to point out the success that Portugal has seen with its complete decriminalization of all personal supplies of drugs. Has seen great success with more drug addicts seeking treatment as well as a smaller percentage of drug users than any other country in the European Union, and all of that with the most liberal drug laws of any country in the world. You see drug laws and drug use have absolutely no correlation except in perhaps the most extreme of applications (China for example).

There are other ways to deter drug use then using the legal system, which honestly is the wrong approach. Society doesn't like a lot of things, but we don't go and prohibit all the things we think are harmful (through the legal system.), just because something is illegal doesn't mean no ones going to do it.

If you want to deter drug use you tax it, much like how you tax tobacco, and alcohol. Taxing is really the only good deterrent we have now a days. They'll either quit, or consume less of it. Also the great thing about taxing it, it produces large amounts of revenue which can easily go toward programs for rehabilitation and treatment. Which is always a better approach then jail time.

Actually, less people try these prescription drugs as "drugs" than people who try marijuana... by A LOT.
42% of 12th graders have tried marijuana, 31% do it annually.
Not so for prescription drugs, they're at less than 10%.
http://www.nida.nih.gov/PDF/Infofacts/PainMed08.pdf
http://www.drugabuse.gov/PDF/InfoFacts/Marijuana08.pdf
Btw, lol at using anti-drug sites to go against the anti-marijuana argument. xD

Aesir, wouldn't deterring people through education be better than getting ready to send them to rehab? Lol.

aeghrur said:

Aesir, wouldn't deterring people through education be better than getting ready to send them to rehab? Lol.

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Look at tobacco you'll see how good education works.

I mean education works for some but unfortunately the state can't do much when the kid goes home and spends time with their parents who are smoking. A lot of kids look up to their parents so when they see their parents smoking a pack a week they think it's acceptable to do that.

Aesir said:

Look at tobacco you'll see how good education works.

I mean education works for some but unfortunately the state can't do much when the kid goes home and spends time with their parents who are smoking. A lot of kids look up to their parents so when they see their parents smoking a pack a week they think it's acceptable to do that.

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But the thing is, the education we currently give kids aren't enough.
DARE wasn't meant to be a 2 year program, it's meant to be taught just about every year. =/ If you can drill math into a kid's head, you can drill disgusting images of dying organs into a kid's head.

Aesir said:

If you want to deter drug use you tax it, much like how you tax tobacco, and alcohol. Taxing is really the only good deterrent we have now a days. They'll either quit, or consume less of it. Also the great thing about taxing it, it produces large amounts of revenue which can easily go toward programs for rehabilitation and treatment. Which is always a better approach then jail time.

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You can't heavily tax all illegal drugs. Some (such as marijuana) are extremely easy and cheap to grow -- if you tax it too much, people will just go right back to buying it from home growers and not the government. Taxing it is a good idea (making it available only through the government is a better idea), but heavily taxing it is a bad one.

@Aesir: It's not so much that kids look up to their parents, it's just that they don't get how bad it is to them. They figure that since all of their friends are doing it and they seem fine, it won't hurt them either.

I'm not going to respond to all the quotes. It's not that I don't have anything to say, it's just that when I did that in the PG, it got increasingly off topic. Instead, I'll just look at the main cause of our opposing views, which seems to be that you believe that the legalization of the drugs will save lives, and I believe it will lose more lives than it helps.

One of the main parts of this disagreement seems to be the fact that Portugal has had success with legalizing drugs, and therefore the same may apply to us. This argument is hurt by the fact that there has been little time since the unbanning, and Portugal is only one country.

I researched the percentages of people who died from tobacco smoking in developed countries (in relation to those countries' overall populations). From the following resource, I found out the amount of people who died from tobacco, separated into several different parts of the 20th century. (This page is about more than tobacco death rates, you may as well just use control+f and search tobacco to find it).

http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat8.htm

Then, using the following link, I determined the populations of those developed countries that the site listed (except for "Europe"). (Just above the chart, you can select the year of the populations you want to use; that's how I collected data from different years).

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/peo_pop-people-population

Since Europe isn't a single country, I looked up its population totals on a separate site (below).

http://www.geohive.com/earth/his_proj_europe.aspx

I then calculated the percentage of the total population (all the countries combined) that died from tobacco. Below are the time periods and percentage of deaths (as compared to the countries' total populations):

1930s-1950s: <.001% (about 1/1765)
1960s: <.001% (about 1/1200)
1970s: about .0011%
1980s: about .0013%
1990s: about .0016%

While this data may seem insignificant at first, by calculating the death rates, you will see that people were more than 2.8 times as likely to die from tobacco smoke in the 1990s than in the 1930s-1950s.


This illustrates two things:

1. The tendency for death rates from drugs to increase over time.

2. The need for us to wait more time to determine the effects of the law. If you look at the first two time periods, people were only about 1.47 times more likely to die from tobacco in the 1960s than the 1930s-1950s; this is barely more than half of the disparity between the first and last time period.

This is a major part of the reason I believe Portugal shouldn't influence our decision much. The other reasons being that their culture is different, drug usage rates didn't actually change much (only death rates), and that is only one country.

The study also somewhat backs up my concerns about drug death rates increasing the longer the drug stays legalized. If the same tendencies were applied to illegal drug rates, they would be around 47,600 deaths after only 70 years of them being legalized. While I realize this doesn't necessarily apply to the illegal drugs as well, it's certainly more accurate than the results of just one country after 8 years.
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There also seems to be a large argument that making them illegal is oppressive and/or an inferior option to making them legal and educating people about them.

Tobacco and alcohol education increased dramatically between 1930 and 1990, yet many more people died from it in the 1990s. It's not oppressive to keep something banned when there is a possible danger to the people (including those not affiliated with the drugs). I honestly can't think of any legal judgment altering substance that risk not only the user but also those around them (other than alcohol and tobacco).
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There is also a major argument that people shouldn't be thrown in jail for simply having the drug. I'm not necessarily saying that they should be thrown in jail. I still think it should be illegal because it can harm people (including those in no way involved with the substance). But it won't ruin the person's life to pay a fine and maybe throw in some community service hours for it. Even better, they could have some required rehab lessons. If anything, this would make them a better person.

They're not being responsible by deliberately breaking the law. If they want to bring attention to the issue, there are much better things that they can do than that, and they should know it. If they really want their case heard, they should go organize a protest or something. Protests get noticed by the media; misdemeanors for possessing illegal substances don't (with the exception of famous people).

Anyways, whether or not the drugs should be actually banned, it's the citizens' responsibility to abide by the current laws. By taking drugs, they are breaking the law and possibly putting others at risk; they deserve to be punished. How much they should be punished is a different debate.

Did you know that the increase in tobacco deaths could actually potentially chalked up to an increased concentration of radioactive polonium in tobacco as the soil and rock from which phosphate is mined has typically higher levels of uranium daughter products which will continue to degrade into polonium.

Of course this is just a possibility, the polonium however is found in cigarettes and its possible the level has increased over the past century.

And last in regards to your analogy, tobacco isn't other drugs, and its effects on the human body are different. Most of the harm from tobacco doesn't actually come from the drug itself but rather the plant matter that contains the drug. Nicotine, while incredibly addictive, is not incredibly harmful because it is rather weak. There are too many reasons why tobacco deaths would increase in percentage rather than the simple reason of being legal which doesn't actually change the deadliness of the drug.



What about codeine containing cough syrup (a weak opiate), what about DXM (which can make you trip balls, its the stuff in Robitussin)? DXM is actually pretty safe too, at least in regards to its impact on your health, I certainly don't recommend operating machinery when using it. There are plenty of mind altering legal substances, but most people tend not to use them for anything but their intended purpose.



Required rehab is only necessary in cases where the person is actually addicted. Should a kid who has a gram of weed on him, planning to go smoke with his friends for the first time be thrown into rehab? Well right now he is given the choice between rehab and a juvenile detention center, and I know which one he is going to pick. These numbers are then used to make it seem that more people are in rehab for marijuana than are actually addicted.



Furthermore as far as the topic is concerned, ending the drug war means ceasing this senseless and unnecessary destruction of lives and rights, a productive member of society who is only actually making this country a better place and harming no one with their drug use can be thrown in jail, causing harm to this nation, harm to his family, and harm to him. And all because he had a drug that he used responsibly.



I can also make the argument that one is responsible for NOT following an unjust law (Martin Luther King). Injustice harms society and infringes upon freedoms granted to the citizens of a nation, and as citizens doing everything possible to bring attention and change is their duty. But I am really afraid that you cannot make the argument that it is irresponsible to break the law, because depending on the circumstances, you can still be responsible and breaking the law.



Also, I do think that at some point we are going to have to differentiate between marijuana and virtually every other illegal drug (by the way, the federal government currently classifies marijuana as being more harmful than cocaine and equally as harmful as heroin, which is flat out untrue).

There also seems to be a large argument that making them illegal is oppressive and/or an inferior option to making them legal and educating people about them.

Tobacco and alcohol education increased dramatically between 1930 and 1990, yet many more people died from it in the 1990s. It's not oppressive to keep something banned when there is a possible danger to the people (including those not affiliated with the drugs). I honestly can't think of any legal judgment altering substance that risk not only the user but also those around them (other than alcohol and tobacco).

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I was wondering if you could find me an increase in % of deaths since 1930s by alcohol?
Because right now, I would pin the increasing number of deaths upon increasing number of:
Population - 1930s, US had ~120mil people
2009, US has ~300mil people.
http://www.census.gov/popest/states/NST-ann-est.html http://www.usapopulationmap.com/race_1930.html

And of course, cars.
There has been a huge increase in driving since the 1930s. http://www.bts.gov/publications/hig...old_travel_survey/html/executive_summary.html
Which means there's a much easier way to get yourself killed with drinking, drunk driving. With these 2 things together, it's pretty easy to explain the reason why alcohol deaths have risen since 1930s. It's not that education doesn't work, it's just that there are more factors working against it, and there still is not enough education

Oh, and also that Americans are stupid because they drink to get drunk. >_>

Also, another reason why legalizing+educating is better than outright banning, if people have demand, there will be supply. Right now, demand for illegal drugs is HUGE, hence why ecstasy is often a very profitable illegal substance in the US. Banning only decreases supply, which makes these drugs more expensive, and it doesn't really deter very well. If you educate well, like thorough education, you can cause a decrease in demand which would be much better than trying to decrease the supply of something like marijuana which is so easy to grow.

In regards to Krazy's example with cigarettes, the US population size has nothing to do with the percentage of people dying. However historically we really didn't know how harmful cigarettes were and we weren't nearly as familiar with diseases like cancer. On top of that we also need to know the percentage of the population that smoked, and how much they smoked on average. This information is absolutely essential to coming to a conclusion about the history of tobacco deaths.

Well the increase in prices tend to increase the amount of stealing that people who are addicted to things like heroin have to do in order to afford their fix. With it legal they wouldn't be as pressed to as much money together for the drugs.

Manhunter, he only had percentages on tobacco, which was why I was asking about percentages on alcohol. He said deaths increase, so I said that's because of population increase and more accidents occurring from drunk driving because there are more cars. He has not stated any percentages yet though. But you're absolutely right on the information thing, and I realized another thing. America's life expectancy has gone up as well since 1930 - http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0005148.html - meaning that since then, we have given tobacco more time to create cancers so obviously it would cause more deaths. Before, they could've died of other causes because they died before the cancer from tobacco was developed. Now, with higher life expectancies, cancers cause more death, tobaccos cause cancer, thus tobaccos cause more death.

For some reason, the thread (or my computer) is screwing up and I can't directly quote manhunter.

I'll just respond to it by paragraph:

-Yes, it's possible that plutonium levels influenced it, but I doubt it would multiply death rates by that much.


-I know tobacco is completely different from different drugs. But what I was trying to get at was that more people are using them, and as a result more people are dying, so both rates increase. And the actual specific effects on the human body of the drug don't effect the amount of consumers very much. I now realize I forgot to post that part of my argument. The following source confirms the increased tobacco consumption in the US throughout the 20th century; this goes along with the increased death rates.
http://tobaccodocuments.org/product_design/11980148.html


-The bit about DXM and cough syrup is in response to when I said "I honestly can't think of any legal judgment altering substance that risk not only the user but also those around them (other than alcohol and tobacco)", correct? If so, then I would definitely say there is a difference. While these can certainly effect driving and other important skills, they don't really make you lose your common sense. With alcohol, for example, the intoxicated person is often too drunk to logically weigh the risks of driving under the influence. Alcohol effects judgment, not just your senses. Tobacco is worse than all of the aforementioned ones. It by itself is dangerous, due to second hand smoke. Just by using it you could be negatively effecting someone. That's why those are illegal, and the substances you mentioned aren't.


-That's kind of what I intended when I said the rehab thing. Obviously the rehab wouldn't be for people who aren't addicted. But anyway, I'm not going to debate over what their punishment should be, only that they should have it in some form, and that is doesn't necessarily have to be jail time.


-Again, they don't have to be thrown in jail. But come on, how are they being responsible and a help to society by breaking the law? Like I said, a person who wants to help society should do something more civil and, well, responsible. They could organize a protest, which will get noticed more and they won't have broken the law. I would agree that legalizing all drugs would reduce the drug war, but I'm arguing that it's not the best solution.


-Using Martin Luther King kind of proves my point. His main "fight" against the laws was organizing non-violent protests, which is exactly what I was saying. As for the people following "civil disobedience", that was a nationwide thing. Unless there is some nationwide agreement to carry around illegal substances, it's not going to raise awareness much, if at all. Plus, you can't really directly compare black people and drugs. We all know drugs themselves can cause serious damage to the user and those around them, while people themselves aren't dangerous (only the actions that they do are).


-First off, I completely agree that heroin and cocaine are worse than marijuana. So, by saying this, do you mean you are in favor of only legalizing marijuana and no other drugs?



EDIT: Woops, didn't see all the new posts. Well, I'll try to find those alcohol stats eventually (it does take a while though).

@aeghrur: I used percentages because of course populations and deaths increased; percentages are relative to the population size at the time, so they're fair to compare. And I realize that there are several factors that could contribute to why this increase has occurred, but many of those factors will also apply to the other drugs if we legalized them (such as increased life expectancy). And there are also other factors that should have helped balance the stats out somewhat, such as increased knowledge about the harm tobacco causes.

Thanks. :D

But the thing about drugs like marijuana is that, we can't be sure they ARE linked to cancer so life expectancy won't matter if it doesn't cause cancer. =/
Also, addiction rates most likely won't apply, because god, Nicotine= soooooooooo addictive.
Marijuana, not so much. =/ And as always, I support increased education upon these subjects because trying to kill supply of these drugs is just a waste of resources. >_>

Well if you are curious, the amount of radiation a pack a day smoker is exposed to is greater than an x-ray, on top of that it is taking place inside of a persons body, rather than coming from outside. I didnt actually realize it, but Wikipedia actually has a section devoted to radioactive carcinogens in tobacco.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_effects_of_tobacco#Radioactive_carcinogens


Furthermore I do not think that you understand the nature of many illegal drugs or legal ones for that matter. LSD doesn't affect judgement except at high doses and it only affects judgment then because you will have no clue what is happening. Heroin doesnt' affect your judgement either, now heroin ADDICTION will change people's judgement, but its mechanism of action is the exact same as any other opiate, it breaks down into morphine which is what produces the high, just like codeine. The difference is in how much it breaks down into and how fast it breaks. To put it simply you don't really seem to know a lot about the effects of specific drugs and seem to be making the assumption that all illegal drugs must alter judgement significantly or are incredibly addictive.


Something else that you should note in your tobacco example. When it comes to tobacco education many of the people who might by dying of lung cancer because of their tobacco use may not have been exposed to education that happened decades after they started smoking.



The drug war in its current context with mandatory minimum sentencing is perfectly relevant to the argument that I am making about throwing people in jail and while you don't have to make a decision about your stance on punishment, it's a valid and important part of this discussion.



Martin Luther King does not prove your point. Let me quote him for you so you can understand better his views on unjust laws.

Martin Luther King said:

I hope you are able to see the distinction I am trying to point out. In no sense do I advocate evading or defying the law, as would the rabid segregationist. That would lead to anarchy. One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty. I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.

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Let me put it this way, I am STRONGLY in support of legalizing marijuana (because it is the safest recreational drug for the high it produces and I know that some people like to have an altered state of mind and marijuana is ideal for this.). In the case of marijuana at least, anything but legalization is ridiculous because it causes so little harm. In addition taking away marijuana from criminal organizations as a means of funding by legalizing it will reduce drug violence worldwide because it will be more difficult for criminals to get the money to purchase weapons, and with a whole new legal industry opened up, hopefully some of them will decide to leave their life of crime as well. In addition we get billions and billions in tax dollars, which the government desperately needs right now in order to pay for the foundation of your country, excellent schools for every child in America.


For other drugs I think that they need to be treated as a public health problem, and while I acknowledge that we cannot tell for sure what will happen (as in if drug use will increase or decrease if they are legalized or decriminalized). I think that having an absolutely massive prison population simply because of our drug war is unnecessary and I would like to see federalism go to work and let the states decide, so we can see on a small scale what will really happen here in the US. And I feel that we are very likely to see decreased use and increased benefits with other illegal drugs at least decriminalized. We honestly do stand to gain less by legalizing other drugs, not as many people use them and a tax on them would not create a massive amount of revenue, but I don't think that throwing people in jail is the right solution.

SkylerOcon said:

You can't heavily tax all illegal drugs. Some (such as marijuana) are extremely easy and cheap to grow -- if you tax it too much, people will just go right back to buying it from home growers and not the government. Taxing it is a good idea (making it available only through the government is a better idea), but heavily taxing it is a bad one.

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Kind of irrelevant to bring this up because I never implied it was okay to heavily tax it. I said it was good to tax it because the state makes money and it deters the usage of it.

Also home growing is really no different then the guys who roll their own cigarettes.

Also the government would never tax it to such extremes because it doens't take a genius to realize this would happen. Even if it did the market would evolve to try and get those sales.

The wonders of Capitalism

@Aesir: It's not so much that kids look up to their parents, it's just that they don't get how bad it is to them. They figure that since all of their friends are doing it and they seem fine, it won't hurt them either.

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Yeah that's a big part, during adolescent years. But during the developing stages of a child's life if they see their parents smoking or drinking that'll stick with them and they'll think it's okay.

Aesir said:

Kind of irrelevant to bring this up because I never implied it was okay to heavily tax it. I said it was good to tax it because the state makes money and it deters the usage of it.

Also home growing is really no different then the guys who roll their own cigarettes.

Also the government would never tax it to such extremes because it doens't take a genius to realize this would happen. Even if it did the market would evolve to try and get those sales.

The wonders of Capitalism

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I misread "Also the great thing about taxing it, it produces large amounts of revenue which can easily go toward programs for rehabilitation and treatment. Which is always a better approach then jail time." as "Also the thing about greatly taxing it, it produces large amounts of revenue which can easily go toward programs for rehabilitation and treatment. Which is always a better approach then jail time."

Sorry!

manhunter098 said:

Well if you are curious, the amount of radiation a pack a day smoker is exposed to is greater than an x-ray, on top of that it is taking place inside of a persons body, rather than coming from outside. I didnt actually realize it, but Wikipedia actually has a section devoted to radioactive carcinogens in tobacco.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_effects_of_tobacco#Radioactive_carcinogens

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And how many deaths does this radiation cause?

manhunter098 said:

Furthermore I do not think that you understand the nature of many illegal drugs or legal ones for that matter. LSD doesn't affect judgement except at high doses and it only affects judgment then because you will have no clue what is happening. Heroin doesnt' affect your judgement either, now heroin ADDICTION will change people's judgement, but its mechanism of action is the exact same as any other opiate, it breaks down into morphine which is what produces the high, just like codeine. The difference is in how much it breaks down into and how fast it breaks. To put it simply you don't really seem to know a lot about the effects of specific drugs and seem to be making the assumption that all illegal drugs must alter judgement significantly or are incredibly addictive.

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Well that's real nice of you to assume that I don't know anything about illegal drugs. I'm not angry or anything, just please don't assume things like this considering you don't really know anything about me.

I realize that taking a drug once doesn't immediately result in impaired judgment. But the problem is there's no real way to ensure how much people will use it or to what extent. In fact, this is one of the major issues with legalizing any of these drugs: they are terrible in large amounts, and we can never guarantee that people will use them in the right amounts. We all know that many people binge on alcohol; why wouldn't they overdose on these drugs as well?

manhunter098 said:

Something else that you should note in your tobacco example. When it comes to tobacco education many of the people who might by dying of lung cancer because of their tobacco use may not have been exposed to education that happened decades after they started smoking.

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Yes, but that doesn't change the fact that tobacco education is a heck of a lot better than in the 1930s. I really don't see how you can argue that it's not a factor at all.

manhunter098 said:

The drug war in its current context with mandatory minimum sentencing is perfectly relevant to the argument that I am making about throwing people in jail and while you don't have to make a decision about your stance on punishment, it's a valid and important part of this discussion.

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I realize it's important. Like I've said, I have, however, stated that I wouldn't necessarily be in favor of requiring jail time, so I'm not going to debate over what the jail sentence should be. But you also shouldn't keep saying it's unfair to put someone in jail, because I'm not really debating that point. I'm just saying it should be illegal.

manhunter098 said:

Martin Luther King does not prove your point. Let me quote him for you so you can understand better his views on unjust laws.

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I don't want to continue debating what Martin Luther King would do, but I will say that he never told us that breaking the law is the best option to raise awareness. Also, hate to repeat myself, but comparing sit-ins to drug usage is a bit of a stretch. We actually know drugs cause harm to us, whereas using the same public places for blacks and whites does not.

manhunter098 said:

Let me put it this way, I am STRONGLY in support of legalizing marijuana (because it is the safest recreational drug for the high it produces and I know that some people like to have an altered state of mind and marijuana is ideal for this.).

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I'll focus on marijuana, then.

manhunter098 said:

In the case of marijuana at least, anything but legalization is ridiculous because it causes so little harm.

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Well that's a huge assumption. Considering there are plenty of scientific tests pointing to the impaired driving skills (I already gave one about this) and judgment it causes. Not to mention if the person is smoking marijuana then they are causing second hand smoke, which causes about 50,000 deaths a year to non-smokers in the US (http://www.lungusa.org/site/pp.asp?c=dvLUK9O0E&b=35422), no need to increase that.

manhunter098 said:

In addition taking away marijuana from criminal organizations as a means of funding by legalizing it will reduce drug violence worldwide because it will be more difficult for criminals to get the money to purchase weapons, and with a whole new legal industry opened up, hopefully some of them will decide to leave their life of crime as well.

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I doubt this. People like that are usually into illicit trade because, due to poor education and motives, that's the only way for them to get money. It's much more likely they would just go into another form of illegal trade.

And there's certainly no guarantee it will reduce overall drug-related deaths. Deaths from drug wars will be reduced, but DUI deaths, second hand smoke deaths, etc. will rise.

manhunter098 said:

In addition we get billions and billions in tax dollars, which the government desperately needs right now in order to pay for the foundation of your country, excellent schools for every child in America.

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Why not just directly fund schools and increase taxes through that instead of making these drugs legal?

manhunter098 said:

I think that having an absolutely massive prison population simply because of our drug war is unnecessary


I don't think that throwing people in jail is the right solution.

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Again, I'm not saying they should have to go to jail. I'm simply saying it should be illegal.

As for letting the states decide, I'm still not in favor. With my beliefs that legalizing these drugs is a true harm to society, I wouldn't want to use a state as a "guinea pig" to test out whether something works.
____________________________________

For aeghrur, I've been looking for the alcohol stats. I haven't been able to find a good source yet, but I did find the following article, which states that alcohol deaths have doubled from 1991-2005 (in the UK, that is): http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6123666.stm

KrazyGlue said:

And how many deaths does this radiation cause?

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Thats actually rather difficult to know, mostly because it is a contributing factor to lung cancer not the only factor. My main point is this though is to point out that an increase in tobacco related deaths is not simply because tobacco is legal.

Well that's real nice of you to assume that I don't know anything about illegal drugs. I'm not angry or anything, just please don't assume things like this considering you don't really know anything about me.

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Your right that I don't know, but a lot of people really don't understand the actual nature of specific drugs and tend to simply lump them all together as "drugs".

I realize that taking a drug once doesn't immediately result in impaired judgment. But the problem is there's no real way to ensure how much people will use it or to what extent. In fact, this is one of the major issues with legalizing any of these drugs: they are terrible in large amounts, and we can never guarantee that people will use them in the right amounts. We all know that many people binge on alcohol; why wouldn't they overdose on these drugs as well?

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Binge drinking typically occurs in the younger population, especially those who aren't old enough to legally drink. Its rather interesting that this behavior is exhibited the most by the people who cannot legally access alcohol.

Yes, but that doesn't change the fact that tobacco education is a heck of a lot better than in the 1930s. I really don't see how you can argue that it's not a factor at all.

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Im not quite sure you understood me, my point was that while tobacco education has been constantly getting better, but the people dying right now from tobacco use were not exposed to this education when they were younger and more impressionable.

I realize it's important. Like I've said, I have, however, stated that I wouldn't necessarily be in favor of requiring jail time, so I'm not going to debate over what the jail sentence should be. But you also shouldn't keep saying it's unfair to put someone in jail, because I'm not really debating that point. I'm just saying it should be illegal.

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If something is illegal then you have to throw them in jail, what you are in support of then would be decriminalization, the law would act as a deterrent but not really punish people very harshly.

Well that's a huge assumption. Considering there are plenty of scientific tests pointing to the impaired driving skills (I already gave one about this) and judgment it causes. Not to mention if the person is smoking marijuana then they are causing second hand smoke, which causes about 50,000 deaths a year to non-smokers in the US (http://www.lungusa.org/site/pp.asp?c=dvLUK9O0E&b=35422), no need to increase that.

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There is only a very weak link between marijuana smoke and lung disease, and in fact for tobacco smokers its actually better for their health if they were to smoke marijuana because cannabinoids which are present in marijuana like THC and CBD have properties that prevent the spread of cancer and will actually kill cancer cells.

To continue marijuana does not affect judgement at all. At higher doses I can tell you it will certainly affect reaction time, but not judgement. The thing is though that since we cant exactly study the effects of marijuana and driving more directly (mostly because the government won't approve experiments) and it is next to impossible to tell when a driver is high unless they are very high, we cannot tell for sure what percentage of accidents are actually CAUSED by marijuana.

I doubt this. People like that are usually into illicit trade because, due to poor education and motives, that's the only way for them to get money. It's much more likely they would just go into another form of illegal trade.

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Except that cultivating marijuana could net them plenty of money with rather minimal upstart costs. If it were legal they now have a way to make money in a legitimate way. Furthermore with less money flowing into criminal organizations, they will not be able to make as much money working for one, so the alternative of actually getting a real job might become a little bit more appealing.

And there's certainly no guarantee it will reduce overall drug-related deaths. Deaths from drug wars will be reduced, but DUI deaths, second hand smoke deaths, etc. will rise.

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You are still making the assumption that use will increase if its legalized, we dont know if that will happen here in the United States, but data from other countries shows that after an initial increase use will actually decrease.

Why not just directly fund schools and increase taxes through that instead of making these drugs legal?

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My point is that the government can increase revenue without actually raising taxes by legalizing marijuana, as I said the income from taxes on other drugs would be significantly less, marijuana however has the potential to give a massive boost to education funding without taking away more money in taxes from the people, with it legalized costs will go down, and taxes will bring them back up. Basically we take the money from the criminals and put it towards our schools.

As for letting the states decide, I'm still not in favor. With my beliefs that legalizing these drugs is a true harm to society, I wouldn't want to use a state as a "guinea pig" to test out whether something works.

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Your beliefs just like my beliefs are not necessarily reality. If drug use were to decrease if they were legalized, wouldn't you be the one supporting more harm to society? I'm not saying your stance is detrimental, but that it could be, just like mine could be, and we can't know until we decide we need to learn more (which due to government resistance is next to impossible).

wtf manhunter, you sure know about all the drugs you're talking about? I'm not saying I disagree with your points but some things you said are ridicoulus:

manhunter098 said:

LSD doesn't affect judgement except at high doses

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This isn't true in the slightest. First of all the dose barely affects the intensity of the trip, which will always affect your judgement but mostly the length of the trip.
Also saying that it doesn't affect judgement is absurd...it heavily affects it. If you really know your stuff about LSD you should know that the brain can't handle the impresstions perceived by your senses anymore resulting in an "overlapping" of these impressions (you start to hear colors and see music). Your senses and your brain are completely unreliable during a trip and screw your judgement pretty badly.

To contribute to the actual topic:

From my experience these kinds of debate always boil down to the same question in the final end: Why should cannabis be illegal when alcohol and tobacco are not? It's a well established fact that both alcohol and tobacco are a lot more harmful than cannabis (and even LSD). It's simple logic: Having something more harmful legal over something less harmful doesn't make sense and will cause unnessecary problems in the long run.

I never said I was in favor of complete decriminalization either. I just said "not necessarily" jail time. I would still be in favor of jail time for, say, an adult selling marijuana to a minor.

______________________________

Anyways, you're making just as many assumptions as I am. But the fact of the matter is, there is a big risk to legalize it. Whether or not it would necessarily raise death rates, you have to acknowledge that there is a decent (if not large) chance of it doing so. The point is, you can't risk people's lives based off of assumptions and hoping. Unless there is some major scientific breakthrough that clearly proves that marijuana doesn't pose a risk to non-users, it's not worth the risk to legalize it.
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@Gheb01 (last part) I don't really think that the argument of "the government should be consistent on its policies" is really valid, I think consistency is a lot less important than what will actually happen if it is legalized. If it were in any way possible, I would say alcohol and tobacco should be banned too, but I find that it is unrealistic that people will be willing to let them be illegal.

Anyways, you're making just as many assumptions as I am. But the fact of the matter is, there is a big risk to legalize it. Whether or not it would necessarily raise death rates, you have to acknowledge that there is a decent (if not large) chance of it doing so. The point is, you can't risk people's lives based off of assumptions and hoping. Unless there is some major scientific breakthrough that clearly proves that marijuana doesn't pose a risk to non-users, it's not worth the risk to legalize it.

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I must disagree in that, there is no big risk to legalize it. What's the risk? Marijuana has been legal for thousands of years before businesses used propaganda to eliminate the competition cannabis posed to their economic well-being. Marijuana hasn't killed off civilizations, it has helped them instead. It hasn't killed thousands every year, in fact, it hardly killed any. =/ I personally don't see the huge risk when in history, there wasn't any risk in having it legalized.

aeghrur said:

I must disagree in that, there is no big risk to legalize it. What's the risk?

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Increased DUI deaths, increased second hand smoke deaths, increased deaths directly from it, etc.

aeghrur said:

Marijuana has been legal for thousands of years before businesses used propaganda to eliminate the competition cannabis posed to their economic well-being. Marijuana hasn't killed off civilizations, it has helped them instead.

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1. Which civilizations, and when?

2. If it was truly that long ago, the cultural and populational difference are so huge that it's barely related to the current situation. There are civilizations in which it could be honorable to kill your own mother in certain situations, (i.e. Greece) and they were a prosperous nations, does that mean murder should be legal?

aeghrur said:

It hasn't killed thousands every year, in fact, it hardly killed any. =/ I personally don't see the huge risk when in history, there wasn't any risk in having it legalized.

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It kills over 1400 just from DUI deaths (not to mention other causes). Here, I'll pull up my calculations from the PG:

KrazyGlue said:

Basically, 45% of people not DUI because of alcohol are DUI with marijuana. Marijuana is involved in about 8.1% of all DUI deaths. Almost 18000 died from DUI crashes in 2003 (http://www.dui.com/dui-library/fatal...add-dui-deaths), meaning that marijuana was involved in about 1458 DUI deaths. If it was legalized, we'd be increasing this number unnecessarily.

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Not only that, there's second hand smoke deaths to consider as well, which I haven't been able to find data on yet.

Plus, what if a pregnant mother smokes pot? She's then essentially forcing her child to end up being born addicted, or if she continues smoking after birth, possibly SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome).
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It's true that there is a chance that these numbers will not increase, but there's an equal or greater chance that they will increase, and that's where the risk is.

KrazyGlue, here's a chunk to chew on. I haven't really caught up with this thread, so if this point has been brought up, my apologies.

Your biggest argument on Marijuana legalization is the increase of DUI's. Let's be honest here, if Marijuana DUI's are only 8% of DUI's, that's a good thing. Just keep reading.

Marijuana's effects to the brain, and your judgement, is far less than that of alcohol. People like me, who used to drink every single day, quit drinking daily due to Marijuana. Meaning less drunk drivers, more high drivers-- and though that sounds bad, its actually a good thing. High drivers have more control, and are far less likely to crash-- which is probably why they're only at 8%. (I know the fact that it's illegal helps, but trust me. People who intend to smoke it when it's legal are probably already smoking it now.) No matter what happens, there WILL be irresponsible drivers out there.

Legalizing marijuana would cause a pretty big shift from drinkers to smokers. Almost all the hardcore alcohol lovers I know prefer marijuana, but don't smoke it due to legal issues. I'd say that legalizing marijuana would actually decrease the amount of drunk drivers on the road. Not by much, but if anything, I think it'll reduce the amount of DUI's. On top of that, it'll save the lives of people that may instead die from liver disease or alcohol poisoning.

I'm not sure if that made any sense. The pros heavily outweigh the cons. If you want me to, I can even give a you a giant pro-marijuana speech.



Also, where are you getting your facts? Marijuana has no addictive substances, and no toxic substances. There is no proof that it causes any sort of cancer, and it is impossible to OD on. No matter how much you smoke, you can not die from marijuana. Unless you're actually breaking nothing but smoke and you die from lack of oxygen. Plus, Marijuana can be baked and consumed, thus defeating the argument all together.