| Marijuana certainly isn't as bad as the anti-drug campaign has made it out to be, but it definitely has adverse affects. For example, smoking anything will give you lung cancer and other things after a number of years.
You really can't put alcohol and marijuana on the same level though. Alcohol can have far more drastic effects than marijuana, in the short and long term. Alcohol has caused many deaths over the years, while there have been no cases of someone dying from ODing on pot.
Also, if you guys remember from high school history class, prohibition of alcohol wasn't very effective. People will continue to smoke, whether or not it's legalized. Only one problem though, drugs in general sometimes have links to other sorts of criminal activities (e.g. mobs and gangsters trafficking narcotics and the like). That's where government regulation of production would help. |