Woah Woah woah there Alex. No need to blow a gasket. I'm sure we all have some strong feelings about this issue, you need to save some screen real estate for the rest of us. Seriously though, they need to legalize marijuana already. The time and effort we go through to track down and punish people over something so harmless is ridiculous. I still wouldn't try it, but I can't for the life of me figure out our obsession with keeping it illegal. It's way less harmful to your health than cigarettes and exponentially safer than alcohol.

Honestly we may all need a little marijuana to get over the following news: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23394416/ Just kidding about the weed though.

It's way less harmful to your health than cigarettes and exponentially safer than alcohol.

I'm pretty sure most of the people here would harsh his buzz.

Seriously though, they need to legalize marijuana already. The time and effort we go through to track down and punish people over something so harmless is ridiculous. I still wouldn't try it, but I can't for the life of me figure out our obsession with keeping it illegal. It's way less harmful to your health than cigarettes and exponentially safer than alcohol.

We are a society of, "It's all about me, I'm going to do what I want" spoiled rotten individuals

I know this is somewhat off topic, and since I didn't read the whole article and don't know if they mention it, but if you expelled all of the illegal citizens who are in US prisons, we might be better off. Although, they'd probably just come back anyway.

The are numerous studies, though they may have delt with a specific crime, like murder, that have shown harsher penalties don't deter anything.

Then that's on them. Do whatever you want to you, just don't let anything happen to me.

In regards to Alex comment on My comment on Jeremy's comment: If it was legal, you wouldn't have to pay to put them in prison- also, if it were regulated and taxed properly, it could lead to a decrease in your taxes.

Fair points, although it seems like the research on whether it is safer than cigs keep flip-flopping. Would legalizing it cause more people to get high which would in turn cause them to break other laws? Not that that result would necessarily make it the wrong move, but it might not solve the crime problem as much either.

If. Right now it's not so I don't condone it.

The really sad thing is that it's been shown to have lots of medical benefits, but our paranoia and thinking of the children is keeping it away from people it could legitimately help.

I think the big reason for the flip-flopping is that you're comparing apples and oranges. I've heard that smoking a joint is much more detrimental to your health than smoking a cigarette. Even if that's true it's irrelevant because no one is, or would be, a 3 pack of joints a day smoker. As I understand it even if you wanted to be high 24-7 it would be much less smoking than for the above average smoker getting their nicotine fix. Some studies take that into account, some don't, and it's not all that clear if joints are more harmful than cigs anyway.

I think I saw that they have way more tar than cigs, but that's not all that makes cigs harmful.