What the discussion has failed to mention so far is the time-and-again position that marijuana is the "gateway drug." A 2003 study suggested yes (http://general-medicine.jwatch.org/cgi/content/full/2003/218/1). From my own experiences in social circles, some friends who started on marijuana did go on to try the "harder" drugs like acid and cocaine. Their personal accounts differ on why they decided to advance their usage, but they did confirm that their starting point was marijuana. A few law-enforcement agents who I am friends with concur in their personal opinion and observation that marijuana is a "gateway drug," in particular they suggest that crystal meth abusers started with it. Thus, the arguement suggests that continued criminalization of marijuana is necessary to prevent users from using "harder" drugs.

This argument is based on the premise that using the "harder" drugs is an inherently bad thing.

(thank you emperor)

(You are most welcome, DBJ. I've got a BA in Poli Sci and a Masters (almost) in Education. I can BS with the best of 'em)

I'd be happy to rebut my own statement, if you'd like.

Right, you want a coherent argument for keeping cannabis illegal. Here goes...

I will freely admit that I have not done the research on the drug, and therefore I can only go by what the common media have reported, and by what I have seen. In addition I am not trying to fight an Alcohol vs Cannabis battle, as I have no desire to do so.

There may admittedly be remarkably few examples of people becoming *addicted* to cannabis, especially in comparison to alcohol or other illegal drugs, but I believe the effects of the drug to be nonetheless serious. For example, the fact that different people can respond to the drug in entirely different ways is something that troubles me greatly. That otherwise intelligent people can be turned into nervous, quivering wrecks through overuse of the drug is something that worries me to a rather large extent. It was something that troubled me when I was at university: I was offered the drug on more than one occasion by my friends, and turned it down every time because I saw what it did to them. OK, those effects were only whilst using, and not prolonged, but I remained concerned for what would become of them if they smoked the stuff on a frequent basis. Perhaps this led to a certain yoghurt-throwing incident...

The reports I have read about people who have smoked a lot of cannabis, and from what I have personally seen, lead me to believe that cannabis should remain illegal, especially as the negative effects of it have been shown to occur - yet none of us knows to whom they will occur. I will, however, say this: I would welcome a derivative of the drug to those whose pain is best relieved by it, but only if it and its effects are properly understood and researched.

@ Emperor Ming, I did not wish to mention this point, as I have not personally experienced anyone talking about this to me - but my friends have always been those relatively 'tame' when it comes to things like that. I did not wish to merely repeat a media POV.

No need Emporer. My feeling was that most people that tried to post a coherent thought on an opposing viewpoint would be able to rebut their own posting. What I didn't realize was that people would find it difficult. I wonder - is it because of the topic? If I had said 'ok, everyone argue the opposite side of abortion' or euthanasia, would that have been easier?

1) Smoking anything is bad for you. Any kind of smoke into your lungs is bad, whether its cigarettes, car exhaust or pot smoke.

2) Smoking pot will sap the willpower out of you to do anything OTHER than smoke pot. While it may not be physically addictive, it is extremely mentally addictive. You will become a good for nothing couch potato and move to Vermont or Northern California.

3) Anyone who thinks pot is a 'natural' high is surely mistaken. The pot being sold today has been no selective bred that if you'd try to sell it in Europe you'd have to put a GMO label on it, and brand it as another attempt by America to kill the world.

4) Only people who need to escape reality need to smoke pot. If you need to escape reality, go see your doctor and he can treat you for depression and prescribe you tested medication.

read 'no selective bred' as 'so selectively bred'

Emperor, there are a nubmer of rebuttals.
1. You can make the same argument for Coka Cola. Every drug user has tried Coke before they tried their drug of chocie.
2. Making it legal will prevent people who start with MJ to advance to harder drugs because they won't have access to those harder drugs through the same dealer that brings them weed.

Now here is my attempt:

I believe that the fewer people consume marijuana the better. It's a cost on people's health which increases health care costs for everyone else. It reduces productivity, and causes long term problems in people who start at a very young age.
Making marijuana legal will certainly increase the usage. Countries that have legalized it saw slight increases in usage after legalization (please don't compare Netherlands usage to US, since there is a strong cultural difference).
Despite the soscietal and monetary costs associated with legalization, I don't think they outweigh the bigger cost of having more marijuana users in the US.


Ok there we go...

*Despite the soscietal and monetary costs associated with keeping it illegal.

Not
Despite the soscietal and monetary costs associated with legalization

DJ, I'm resisting the urge to rebut the points you've just made. All of the pro-illegality arguments made so far I could rebut in my sleep. =P

It would be very difficult for me to sincerely argue against marijuana legalization without having it sound like a terrible self-serving satire of the anti-cannabis argument. And yes, it is because of the topic. I think that I play a damn good Devil's Advocate for many issues, but if I were to argue for anti-cannabis legislation I'd have to do it the way most people do it, with misinformation. If you started up Euthanasia or Abortion, I have my opinions, but I can quite fluidly argue the other side. It seems my voice isn't required, but if anyone wants me to rebut any of the anti-marijuana statements so far, just let me at them!

So Chripi, there's your challenge. Argue the opposing side using facts. You tend to think you are an intelligent guy, no? Lets see that brain of yours. Don't do it with lies and misinformation. But lets see you do it.

I honestly didn't think you people were so closeminded and stuck in your ways that you couldn't rationally argue something you didn't agree with. I've seen some extremely intellectual discussions on this site on a variety of issues and I thought this would be in interesting exercise.

I did a short google and tried to find the best articles that justify anti-cannabis legislation, but I wasn't very successful, since it seems most of the articles on the internet are very much for marijuana legalization. As it is, here are all three of the writings supporting anti-cannabis legislation that I found in the first three pages of a google search. They make me cry and could be self-rebutted with any amount of research, but here you go:

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/127823/why_we_should_keep_marijuana_illegal.html?cat=9

http://media.www.muhlenbergweekly.com/media/storage/paper300/news/2004/10/07/Oped/Keep-Marijuana.Illegal-746131.shtml

http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v08/n549/a05.html

If you legalize it more people will smoke it, and smoke it earlier, leading to more shiftless potheads.

Win.

DJ, I take offence at the implication that my inability to argue a particular side at the drop of a hat indicates either closed-mindedness or lack of intelligence. Most of the arguments presented so far are quite weak, some of them based on simply false claims, others applied to marijuana in a way that is never applied to other things. Yes, I could have said them too, but that would only have demonstrated by ability to produce a foul taste in my own mouth, not any debating skill.

You want me to argue for marijuana? Fine, I incorporate http://www.justice.gov/dea/marijuana_position.html by reference. There's my argument. It's a stupid, facile argument, but obviously I can do it. I could cut and paste it if you'd prefer, but I'd rather not take up the space.

Could I come up with a better argument? Yes, I think so, with enough time and effort, but not now. Why is it hard to come with a good argument? Not because I'm closed minded, not because I'm stupid, but because the position is WRONG, of course!

im sorry that i dont have much time to read all of this, so sorry that if i repeat anything
reasons why pot should be legal:
causes no harm to others
as far as i know, is less harmful then cigarettes or alcohal
stimulate the economy ENORMOUSLY... legalize it and tax it, with all of the pot smokers we have in this country, i bet if would be close to pulling us out of our national debt haha
it would create a lot of jobs
more plants! going green!
more room in prisons for real criminals

this would go along with certain rules and restrictions, reasonably
of course there are points against, but i have a feeling that the legalization of marijuana could come in the near future... just a prediction

DJ, that's just the thing though. I can't argue it logically using the facts because from a scientific standpoint, most every major study conducted on the effects of cannabis convince me that it should be legal. Euthanasia and abortion can be argued on differences in ethics, but anti-cannabis legislation cannot be argued using a difference of ethics unless I'm also willing to say that I believe that alcohol, nicotine, many pharmaceuticals and other substances such as caffeine, skydiving and other extreme sports, fast food and other unhealthy foods, pornography and unhealthy sexual practices, staying up late, gambling, and many, many other things illegal on the basis that it's better to have a paternal state that babies it's citizens and punishes people for harming themselves. This view is at least a logically consistent ethical difference and while I would accept it as an anti-cannabis argument, I think it's obvious why I don't agree with it.

You want me to argue using facts and logic, but the only way for me to do that is to change my logical premise from one of personal choice and individuality to that of complete legislated morality, and while it is logically consistent, it just isn't a persuasive argument. I could make a more persuasive argument, but like I said, it would involve invoking more emotionally and morally charged language and using misinformation and stigma.

Perhaps we should have threads arguing for slavery and child abuse and the revocation of women's suffrage.

Externalities that affect others - secondhand smoke or car accidents. I don't want to die because some imbecile got high before driving home.

For me, at least, arguments along these lines tend to be the most compelling. Are there ways of addressing them? Absolutely. But I do think that they have some merit in this debate.

now that would be interesting, especially the slavery argument.

Having perhaps insulted some of the anti-pot arguers myself just now, let me stress the word ‘most’ in ‘Most of the arguments presented so far are quite weak,’ and refer to Chrispminis, who explained it better than I did.

Actually Toby, I thought you explained it better than I did. We were both quite condescending though. =P

I'm still aching to be let loose on some of the arguments presented thus far, but I'll restrain myself. I'm still interested in this challenge though, and the more and more I think about it, the more I think I can at least present a small patchwork of semi-justifiable arguments, though they do walk the line between argument and misrepresentation of information. I'll be back with what I come up with.

Chrispi, You are just being stubborn now. I bet you that in absence of this thread, if I had posted a thread called 'Convince me that 2 + 2 = 5', you would have come up with arguments based in theoretical physics, abstract logic, diametrically opposed ethical dilemmas and metaphysics. You know you would LOVE to have that argument instead.

Chrispi, Note that stubborn post was actually typed before your one above it.

Toby,
I find arguing things I don't believe in at the drop of a hat does indeed require some semblance of intelligence, imagination, agility and the ability to swallow ones own belief for the exercise.

Here's a much better article than the other three that I posted, in that it's actually well written, but the arguments remain old and logically inconsistent, but I wouldn't want to poison the well too much! =P

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/antonio-maria-costa-cannabis-call-it-anything-but-soft-441735.html

Well DJ, 2+2=5 is a different thing altogether. When you ask me to argue against that it is assumed that I can do away with certain aspects of reality and perhaps use some misinformation and humorous trickery and sophism to convince you otherwise, like dividing by zero or using only positive solutions to a square root. However, I was assuming that when you ask me to argue against marijuana legalization, you'd want me to stay within realistic and honest confines. I already told you I could try to pull some sophist wizardry, but it would be misinformation, and what practical use would it be to form an argument that doesn't take reality for granted? I thought we were taking this seriously. =P