How many lives would be saved if the marijuana prohibition was lifted?

Published May 15, 2010

Marijuana costs 400 dollars a pound to produce, but sells for 2500-3000 a pound. It is such a profitable crop to sell and traffic, simply because it’s illegal. If it were legalized and regulated (no being noticeably high in public, no driving while intoxicated), the profit margins would be much less, and violent drug cartels wouldn’t have nearly as much money from marijuana trafficking and dealing (this absence of profit would NOT be spent on guns, transportation for trafficking other harder drugs, or otherwise furthering their illegal, violent lifestyles.)

Here’s a couple excerpts from an article I just read about what happened when Portugal legalized not just marijuana, but other illegal drugs such as cocaine, meth, and heroine.

The paper, published by Cato in April, found that in the five years after personal possession was decriminalized, illegal drug use among teens in Portugal declined and rates of new HIV infections caused by sharing of dirty needles dropped, while the number of people seeking treatment for drug addiction more than doubled.

“Judging by every metric, decriminalization in Portugal has been a resounding success,” says Glenn Greenwald, an attorney, author and fluent Portuguese speaker, who conducted the research. “It has enabled the Portuguese government to manage and control the drug problem far better than virtually every other Western country does.”

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1893946,00.html?imw=Y
Dancing smurf – Marijuana has never been proven to cause cancer of any kind, actually recently, it has been proven to reduce tumor growth: http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUSTRE5307VK20090401
It also does not lead to suicide, or paranoia, at least not in the long term. People can be paranoid and anxious while high, but this is often because of a subconscious guilt they feel when they smoke.

How many lives would be saved if the marijuana prohibition was lifted?

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