if hard drugs carry greater health risks than marijuana, rationally, we can't ban them without comparing the harm from prohibition against the harms from drugs themselves.
Anti-smoking campaigns have been airing for years. Legalizing marijuana just sets that back further. No smoke is the best smoke no matter what is behind the smoke.
Black markets increase violence because buyers and sellers can't resolve disputes with courts, lawyers, or arbitration, so they turn to guns instead. Black markets generate corruption, too, since participants have a greater incentive to bribe police, prosecutors, judges, and prison guards. They also inhibit quality control, which causes more accidental poisonings and overdoses.
Some might argue that the black markets might also be a result of unstable individuals who are simply looking for unconventional ways to retrieve something at a possible better deal or circumstance. Someone could be stealing cigarette packs and selling them for a cheaper price, yet cigarettes are legal.
In fact, many legal goods cause serious harm, including death. In recent years, about 40 people per year have died from skiing or snowboarding accidents; almost 800 from bicycle accidents; several thousand from drowning in swimming pools; more than 20,000 per year from pharmaceuticals; more than 30,000 annually from auto accidents; and at least 38,000 from excessive alcohol use.
With the exception of alcohol, these deaths do not accompany serious side effects, addiction, and all the other horrors that accompany drug related issues. This is very hard to compare with the only similarity being a fatal ending for the person involved.
Marijuana, for example, appears incapable of causing a lethal overdose, but cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamine can kill if taken in excess or under the wrong circumstances.
While Marijuana cannot cause a lethal overdose, some might argue that being in an impaired state could cause harm to yourself or others without being fully aware.
who was nurtured in its bosom; who has been sustained by its spiritual blessings and who will remain true to it as long as the cord of life shall lengthen.
Metaphor
Was not Jesus an extremist for love: "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you." Was not Amos an extremist for justice: "Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever flowing stream." Was not Paul an extremist for the Christian gospel: "I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus." Was not Martin Luther an extremist: "Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise, so help me God." And John Bunyan: "I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience." And Abraham Lincoln: "This nation cannot survive half slave and half free." And Thomas Jefferson: "We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal . . ."
Exemplification and Classification
"outside agitators"
Description