This is not about weed vs alcohol! But if you can't see the difference they you obviously don't know what you are talking about.
As far as people being around someone smoking and not testing/failing a drugtest is BS! It has been done.
I have worked many goverment contract jobs and taken/scheduled alot of drug tests.
As far as taxes you people really have no clue how anything works do you. Please explain it how it will benefit you to legalize marijuana?
It will not create jobs, marijuana is not a suitable subsitute material for many items, it is not illegal to use it for goods. This or any law will not change the fact at all.
They tax marijuana and the price goes up, street value goes up, crime stays the same or increases.
Crime goes down!!!! 
And do you still realize that this will still not change most drug test at work! I know places that won't hire if you smoke cigarettes.
There are alot more con's then there is pro's to legalize it.
And if you think it cures cancer you really need to read up before you post!
I'm sorry, but you've posted this same thing over and over... you won't see it any other way. So that, to me, is closed minded.
Actually you are the one that is showing you are closed minded.
If you have anything to add then do so. Trying to hide behind others post especially when their point of view is wrong makes you look like you really don't know what you are talking about.
If you have anything to show that I am wrong then post otherwise save the simple post so you don't look simple! 
Just because
you think they are wrong, doesn't mean they are.
I have no reason to hide behind anyone or anything. you have stated the same thing over and over, even when presented with ample information proving that it is and could be beneficial to this country. You just refuse to see it any other way. Which I'm not entirely sure you've even read over every post in this thread.
It is well known that Americans illegally consume about 31 million pounds of marijuana every year at an estimated retail cost of $3,570 per pound. That adds up to an expenditure of nearly $111 billion annually, all of it going into an underground economy that remains untaxed by the federal government.
The underground economic diversion of money into the marijuana market subsequently costs the government $31.7 billion annually in tax revenue that should be generated from the transactions if they were conducted legally.
Marijuana arrests account for 5.54% of all arrests in the United States, which spends $193 billion annually on its criminal justice system. As such, marijuana arrests account for $10.7 billion annually in criminal justice expenses. The average prisoner costs the taxpayers $33,615 a year to imprison and each one on average costs $9,412 just for their health benefits.
The FBI says that marijuana crimes account for 45.6% of all drug arrests. Add it all up, and marijuana prohibition costs the US roughly $41.8 billion every year according to a 2007 estimate by public policy researcher Jon B. Gettman, Ph.D.
Marijuana prohibition costs the U.S. government and taxpayers billions of dollars annually!!! The criminal prohibition of marijuana has not dissuaded anyone from using marijuana or reduced its availability. however, the strict enforcement of this policy has adversely impacted the lives and careers of millions of people who simply elected to use a substance to relax that is objectively
safer than alcohol. <~ yes it is, my friend.
The societal costs of propagandizing against marijuana and marijuana law reform,
funding anti-marijuana 'science', interdicting marijuana, eradicating domestically grown marijuana
and industrial hemp, law enforcement, prosecuting and incarcerating marijuana smokers costs
U.S. taxpayers in excess of $12 billion annually.
Of the many numerous arguments that can be advanced by law reformers and advocacy
groups like NORML, is the self-evident truth that marijuana prohibition, an utterly failed public policy,
costs taxpayers too much
Replacing marijuana prohibition with a system of legal regulation would save approximately $7.7 billion in government expenditures on prohibition enforcement, $2.4 billion at the federal level and $5.3 billion at the state and local levels.
Hmm...
Max Chaiken, a graduating economics major at Brown wrote a senior thesis which finds that “a legally taxed and regulated marijuana market could generate upwards of $200 billion annually in excise tax revenues for the federal government.” The thesis is dated April 17, 2009 and can be reviewed here.
http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Economics/2009_undergrad_theses/Max_Chaiken_thesis.pdf US law forbids farmers from growing hemp without a federal license, and has discouraged all commercial hemp production since the 1950s. The ability to grow, harvest and find commercial applications for Hemp could create
thousands of jobs in the following months. In addition to putting thousands back to work quickly and helping put money back into the pockets of the currently unemployed American, these items could be taxed. That would then allow money to start flowing into the coffers of the local, state and federal revenue offices once again.
Industrial hemp has many uses, including paper, textiles, biodegradable plastics, construction, health food, and fuel. It is one of the fastest growing bio-masses known, and one of the earliest domesticated plants known. It may be environmentally helpful, for example hemp requires fewer pesticides, no herbicides, controls erosion of the topsoil, and produces oxygen. Furthermore, hemp can be used to replace many potentially harmful products, such as tree paper (the processing of which uses chlorine bleach, which results in the waste product polychlorinated dibensodioxins, popularly known as dioxins, which are carcinogenic, and contribute to deforestation), cosmetics, and plastics, most of which are petroleum-based and do not decompose easily.
In 1916, USDA Bulletin No. 404, reported that one acre of cannabis hemp, in annual rotation over a 20-year period, would produce as much pulp for paper as 4.1 acres of trees being cut down over the same 20-year period. This process would use only 1/4 to 1/7 as much polluting sulfur-based acid chemicals to break down the glue-like lignin that binds the fibers of the pulp, or none at all using soda ash. The problem of dioxin contamination of rivers is avoided in the hemp paper making process, which does not need to use chlorine bleach (as the wood pulp paper making process requires) but instead safely substitutes hydrogen peroxide in the bleaching process...If the new (1916) hemp pulp paper process were legal today, it would soon replace about 70% of all wood pulp paper, including computer printout paper, corrugated boxes and paper bags.
An acre of hemp produces four times as much pulp as an acre of trees. The recovery of the American economic situation would move ahead quickly as farming operations could start to move forward, transportation operations such as trucking and rail could start to see a resurgence, retail and textile operations would see an uptick in the profit and large scale scientific companies could start to see the true value of marijuana as they could start to design hybrid (not that the independent underground society has not done this already) plants and species that could have far reaching implications for the medical and commercial applications.
Gee, I don't see how
any of that could benefit
anything...
Community Forum
Topic: Legalize Marijuana? (Read 29382 times)
June 26, 2010, 10:46:43 am
