What the hell does secondary harm from irresponsible behavior have to do with the harm presented from the actual substance? Hey, you wouldn't want someone to hit you in the head with a hammer, let's outlaw hammers! If you want to know what would be the effect of legalizing marijuana, you could look at the first 5,000 years of documented use...that would be pretty much everything up until the last 80 years or so. Or, you could look at the Netherlands - they have coffee shops that sell pot, and their drug use and crime levels are both much less than ours in this country. And you show the harm it causes, since you claim it exists. I'd love to see your proof. There is no way you are in any way associated with Harvard University. No...

The last 3 presidents have all smoked Marijuana. Steve Jobs smokes. Bull Gates has, too. The majority of high-level athletes. Nearly every successful musician, actor, writer, or entertainment industry member of all-time. Most high-level politicans, when you get right down to it. The list of those who have smoked marijuana and gone on to great success is easily long enough to dispel this whole "it will ruin your future" BS. I was in the Army for 10 years without smoking once, however I smoked before and after. The end result was a distinguished military career, and I am currently a Jr. in college 2 years after leaving the military. You don't get "strung-out" on marijuana...some people who are already lazy just happen to use...

Someone with the name "Harvard - MIT" should relly be more educated on this issue. Maybe you could talk Lester Grinspoon, Associate Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical, for starters.

claire wrote "People are not entitled to an opinion unless they go to 90 AA meetings ion 90 days to witness the human costs of addiction. They are so degrading that they outweigh all other concerns. " Marijuana does not form a physical dependency. This is one of the most firmly established facts concerning the plant. good try, though.

Marijuana is ABSOLUTELY less dangerous than alcohol. It isn't even a contest. Fist fights don't happen because of marijuana...it's laughable to even make that argument. And marijuana didn't kill anyone on that train, irresponsibility did. If you are going to lay the blame at the feet of marijuana, you better be a gun-control advocate, or you're being intellectually disingenuous. There is NO consistency between Conservatism and anti-drug legislation. None whatsoever. And there is not a single empirically supported reason for the continuation of the prohibition. There are really two sides in this debate - the pro-legalization crowd, and the corwd that doesn't have the first clue what they're talking about.

Accutane is a recently synthesized pharmaceutical. Cannabis is an organic plant that has been used in many forms widely for 10,000 years. And no one, not one single person, has ever died from Cannabis use. Tobacco alone killed almost half a million in just the US last year. There is no quicker way to display your own ignorance than to claim the marijuana presents significant health risks to the user. The federal government to this day gives marijuana to patients to deal with their health problems, and a recent study showed that one man, Irv Rosenfeld, who has been receiving the drug for almost 25 years, showed ABSOLUTELY NO NEGATIVE EFFECTS from its use. This article is shamefully ignorant, misleading and ill-conceived. I'm a...