Should marijuana be legal?

"I can't support the legalization of marijuana. Scientific evidence indicates that the moment that it enters your body, one, it does damage, and second, it can become addictive. It is a gateway drug" John Mccain - 29 Oct 1999

Does anyone see how hypocritical John Mccain is? His wife is a booze pedaler for crying out loud!

"The consequences of this are 22,073 alcohol caused deaths a year (2006) – these are deaths unrelated to accidents, suicides or homicides. About half of these deaths are from liver disease from alcoholism."

Percent of adults who were current regular drinkers (at least 12 drinks in the past year): 50%
Percent of adults who were current infrequent drinkers (1-11 drinks in the past year): 14%

However, nearly 17.6 million adults in the United States are alcoholics or have alcohol problems. Alcoholism is a disease with four main features:

Craving - a strong need to drink
Loss of control - not being able to stop drinking once you've begun
Physical dependence – withdrawal symptoms, such as nausea, sweating or shakiness after stopping drinking
Tolerance - the need to drink greater amounts of alcohol in order to get “high”

Most people who smoke marijuana smoke it only occasionally. A small minority of Americans - less than 1 percent - smoke marijuana on a daily basis. An even smaller minority develop a dependence on marijuana. Some people who smoke marijuana heavily and frequently stop without difficulty. Others seek help from drug treatment professionals. Marijuana does not cause physical dependence. If people experience withdrawal symptoms at all, they are remarkably mild.

[EDITOR: Post was over limit-length. Deleted the quotes. Please use the "Suggest Expert Quote" feature for that purpose.]

It is estimated that more than 50 million Americans suffer from chronic pain. When treating pain, healthcare providers have long wrestled with a dilemma: How to adequately relieve a patient's suffering, while avoiding the potential for that patient to become addicted to the pain medication. (SAMHSA)

In 2000, 43 percent of those who ended up in hospital emergency rooms from drug overdoses-nearly a half million people-were there because of misusing prescription drugs. (SAMHSA)
From 1998 to 2000, the number of people entering an emergency room because of misusing hydrocodone (Vicodin) rose 48 percent, oxycodone (OxyContin) 108 percent, and methadone 63 percent. The rates are intensifying: from mid-2000 to mid-2001, oxycodone went up in emergency room visits 44 percent. (SAMHSA)

Over the past decade-and-a-half, the number of teen and young adult (ages 12 to 25) new abusers of prescription painkillers such as oxycodone (OxyContin) or hydrocodone (Vicodin) has grown five-fold (from 400,000 in the mid-eighties to 2 million in 2000). (SAMHSA)
More than 17 percent of adults over 60, wittingly or not, abuse prescription drugs. (SAMHSA)
Among 12- to 17-year-olds, girls are more likely than boys to use psychotherapeutic drugs nonmedically. (SAMHSA)

I can't ever vote for a politician as corrupt or as ignorant as John Mccain.

Prescription drugs and Alcohol are far more dangerous. Mccain is against Medical Marijuana despite all the evidence. Annheuser-Busch just secured sponsorship of the 2011 and 2012 superbowls. So Mccain's wife an ex-prescription drug addict will buy adds that will knowingly advertise beer to children around the Country, while Mccain stands firm against both recreational use (that might hurt his wife's profits) and Medical use (which is safer than Prescription drugs, which his wife was addicted to)

This doesn't make sense to me at all.

Current law is insane.

Marijuana does not cause serious health problems like those caused by tobacco or alcohol
by the way I found a website that give you prizes for your opinions here is the topic about Marijuana
http://opinion.ezwingame.com/topics/Should-we-legalize-weed-in-the-intire-U-S

Rather than repeat the already stated reasons for legalization, I think I have a different angle.:

For my entire life I have lived in an area of heavy marijuana use. It is generally accepted as socially acceptable, and is rarely a matter of interest among police. This very same area has never in my memory had an issue with harder, more dangerous drugs such as cocaine or heroin.

Likewise, in the larger city roughly 50 kilometers away, the police have spent the last 20 years in a strict crackdown on marijuana, and have been successful to the point where the city seems almost entirely free from both users and dealers. However, the void left by the absence of majiuana has been filled by much more alarming and addictive substances.

As such, I believe from my own observations that the crackdown on majiuna use and it's criminalization is a bad thing because, among other reasons, it serves as a alternative to more addictive and deadly substances.

I do think it should be legal, but I definitely don't think that Glenn Beck and I actually have the same opinion on this. "I woke up this morning and I thought, we should legalize marijuana." Really? Knowing Glenn Beck, that's way more likely to be rhetoric than an actual, entirely sincere comment. Also he apparently used to be a drug addict? I don't know. Even if that's his real opinion, I still want to punch him in the face.

All drugs should be legal. Marijuana should not be controversial at all. It is no worse than alcohol or tobacco, which are legal.

Just do me a favor and don't smoke it (or tobacco) upwind of me.

Well, marijuana is probably one of the safest drugs in the sense that it is neither physiologically addicting nor provably hazardous to your health. But most people in power see it as a detriment to society and necessary to criminalize. In some ways their right, as population of free-minded burnouts don't make very good corporate serfs.

But either way, the stuff is pretty plentiful, and if you want it bad enough no law on the books can force you to put down your bong. Still, "you've got to pay to play", and if you're not willing to accept the consequences for your actions, you're in the wrong game.

BY KEEPING MARIJUANA ILLEGAL IT KEEPS BLACK MARKETEERS (DEALERS ETC) IN BUSINESS; WHICH IN TURN MAKES PEOPLE (WHO WOULD OTHERWISE BE LAW ABIDING)for whatever their reasons to use it seek out these dealers who they would not usually associate with .therefore risking getting busted and face criminal charges and a known associate of these dealers and their criminal baggage.Also the material or fibres of the plant have an extrodinary amount of uses from paper to clothing and also medicinal.it is a very useful plant that may very well help reduce greenhouse gas emissions

Should also have questions here regarding:

Is marijuana a gateway drug?
Is moderate marijuana use dangerous to health?
- does it effect memory / intelligence long term?
- does it cause cancer - i.e. the active ingredient THC

Regarding health, there is this potency argument that assumes marijuana is more dangerous if it's more potent... But if the real danger is cancer from smoking, then more potent marijuana potentially allows the same high to be delivered without requiring the inhalation of so many carcinogens.

A question on medical marijuana too...