FREEDO (PRO)Greetings UltimateFighter! A pleasure to be sharing my first edeb8 with you!
ARGUMENTS
1) Civil liberties are a value of modern society and should be respected.
a. People are generally happier when they have more freedom.
b. We should strive for a happier society.
c. It is a common ethical and political understanding, effective in practice, that people should not be arbitrarily deprived of acting on their own volition unless their actions are recognized as harmful.
d. I expect Con to concede these points, as they are pretty basic to setting the context of the debate. Arguing them is a waste of time, but they are up for debate if necessary.
2. Cannabis is NOT harmful.
a. If cannabis is to be banned for public health reasons, one must also argue either that tobacco and alcohol should be illegal as well, or otherwise prove that cannabis poses a worse public health risk.
b. About 80,000 people die from alcohol poisoning every year, in the United States alone. [1]
c. For tobacco, the number is 443,000. [2]
d. Yet, cannabis has never resulted in death. [3] Well, maybe just one time: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/10/04/newser-marijuana-death/2922011/
e. Cannabis is also non-biologically addictive, unlike alcohol, tobacco and caffeine. Of those forced to undergo treatment for cannabis, 36% hadn't even used cannabis within the last 30 days of their admission. [4]
f. Here, you can a see a graph comparing lethal dose ratio and addiction potential: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3e/Drug_danger_and_dependence.png
g. Cannabis may potentially be the single most medically important substance known to humankind. I will expand on this later.
3. Prohibition is harmful.
a. Cartels exist because prohibition puts good business-people out of the market, allowing them to monopolize, feeding billions of dollars in the black market and promoting violence and harder drug use.
b. In the US, where the drug-war is highly aggressive, the prison system has become a national atrocity. About 6.7 MILLION Americans, or 1 in every 32, are either in prison or on parole. 24% of them are there for drug violations. [5]
c. It costs billions of dollars to keep these people locked up, on top of the billions of dollars it costs to wage the drug-war itself. This is money that could be spent on helping people, targeting hard drugs and cartels, or that could simply be left in the taxpayers pocket.
CONCLUSION
Laws are meant to be put into effect for the purpose of improving the general welfare, prosperity, stability and safety of society. A law which denies a person the right to consume a natural substance which is scientifically and historically verified to be harmless, whether for recreational or medical purposes, locks them in cages for doing so, takes money out of your own pocket to pay for them to stay there, and has the aftermath of allowing drug empires to monopolize the market and further hurt innocent people, is no law at all--it's disgrace to human dignity and our idea of living in a society based on a code of civil standards.
SOURCES
1. http://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/fact-sheets/alcohol-use.htm
2. http://www.cdc.gov/chronicdisease/resources/publications/aag/osh.htm
3. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/13/alcohol-pot-use_n_3914511.html
4. http://www.alternet.org/story/80408/calling_b.s._on_the_idea_of_%27marijuana_addiction%27
5. http://usgovinfo.about.com/cs/censusstatistic/a/aainjail.htm
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2013-11-15 18:14:38
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2013-12-13 18:15:01
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2014-01-10 18:15:02
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2014-01-22 12:56:34
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2014-03-19 12:57:01
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Nice arguments Freedo. Really looking forward to voting on this.Posted 2013-11-17 15:49:37