I am both.

FOR - excellent source of revenue (and people would have to pay more, thus discouraging use)

AGAINST - The danger of marijuana use would rise due to a rise in public use.

For but it needs to be regulated similar to alcohol, b/c it can effect driving and kids should not be able to just buy it

For

If alcohol is legal so should marijuana.

I was wondering how people would react to my post.  Would they react to my "it's icky" section or my safety concerns section?  

You know, what's even worse are the people who say that because alcohol is legal that marijuana should be legal as well.  A cousin of mine was killed by a drunk driver before he turned 20.  He wasn't doing anything wrong.  He wasn't driving dangerously.  He went to the grocery store to pick up a few items for his family one night and a drunk driver on his way back from the bars ran a red light and hit him.  He died at the scene.  

It was a crime of opportunity.  The driver ran the red light because his judgment was impaired by alcohol and he was behind the wheel because he had gotten drunk at a place other than his own home.  Marijuana is no different than alcohol in its ability to impair judgment:

http://www.nida.nih.gov/researchreports/marijuana/Marijuana3.html

Now let's speculate for a moment and ask ourselves if marijuana were legal, what are the foreseeable effects on society?  I think one foreseeable effect would be an  increase in public places to get high.  I'm sure certain existing bars would allow it.  Some new places tailored to this purpose might appear as well.  I said earlier that my cousin's death was the result of a crime of opportunity.  If even one new place catering to this opens, then the opportunity, the probability, for a marijuana-related accident has increased.

I as well as my friends and family have the right to be safe on the road, in our homes, and everywhere else.  I believe our right to safety is more important than your right to injest recreational drugs.  And I really don't want to lose another family member to a drug-related car accident.

Just as many people die in non-alcohol related traffic accidents as alcohol related ones. We should make cars illegal too. Even if you remove alcohol from the equation the cars still kill people.

The more freedom you afford a society, the more danger it's going to be in. Period. But just like a parent with a child, at some point you have to acknowledge you can't just lock them in a padded room for their protection...especially if they are adults. Banning cars would drastically reduce the number of deaths in automobile accidents. Is it morally wrong for the government to allow adults to drive knowing full well that 37-40 thousand people will die every year that they allow them to exist (albeit in a regulated state)?

It's seems you're emotionally involved in the topic, I am sorry for your loss. But emotions aren't pragmatic or logical. Feelings don't make good legislation.

It is interesting that you would bring automobiles themselves into this discussion.  Now we have not one, but two legally obtainable and regulated items available for everyday use and consumption... which still end with thousands of people dying every year.  If anything, you are making the case against marijuana legalization by providing yet another example of the government's inability to adequately regulate something without still putting lives in danger.

Let me summarize our positions:

My position: Legalizing marijuana comes with a foreseeable safety concern with an outcome of lives being lost which would not have been otherwise.

Your position:  More danger logically follows a society allowed more freedoms.

My response to your position:  I agree and would pose a different example to you.  If you live in a society that allows you to legally murder other members in cold blood then there will be more danger however I do not believe that such additional freedom is worth the danger.  To quote my first post:

FOR, for those people able to spell it properly! yaay

(im kidding. i've never tried it but i cant see it being that harmful..)

We just disagree on where the line is drawn. I could say my safety is more important than you getting to work on time and call for the banning of dangerous automobiles. And it would be just as true. To say that our safety is more important that our freedom is to say we should re-instate prohibition, make tabacco illegal, get cars off the roads, planes out of the skies, bug repellant off the shelves, and about a hundred other things that if used improperly can injure, or harm innocent people. The banning of pot is an arbitrary and illogical line in the sand, and isn't even as dangerous as countless other things we find perfectly acceptable to use on a day to day basis.

But you see, "banning of pot" isn't even the subject.  It's already banned.  Society does perfectly well with it that way.

The issue is unbanning it and legally allowing another substance with potential effects as dangerous as alcohol.  If you want me onboard with legalizaing marijuana then you need to demonstrate that society is mature enough to handle it.  If you have a child who constantly shoves a red crayon up his nose and hurts himself then you don't give him more crayons, you work with him until he's intelligent/mature enough to play with his red one and then you let him have more.

If society can't even handle alcohol without thousands of deaths yearly, I see no reason to compound that with marijuana which...

http://www.nida.nih.gov/researchreports/marijuana/Marijuana3.html

...is just as dangerous. 

You also take away the kid's crayons. So just as a philosophical matter, I have to ask if you're in favor of banning alcohol, tobacco, and automobiles?