How can anyone ignore the benefits?

I know I'm beating a dead horse here, for some people, but how can anyone ignore the benefits of marijuana legalization?

Marijuana is California's largest cash crop, illegal or not. It's estimated that marijuana accounts for $14 billion of revenue...

each year in the state of California alone. Legalizing marijuana and imposing a 10% tax would bring in $1.4 billion a year for the state, not to mention the money generated from legalizing it nationwide.

The United States is the most criminal country in the world. Having only 5% of the earth's population, it has 25% of it's prisoners. We spend over $200 billion a year on policing the streets, corrections and court costs. Almost half of the arrests and costs are non violent drug possession charges related to marijuana. Legalizing marijuana would free up the judicial system for dealing with the child molesters and murderers who belong in prison, not the otherwise law abiding citizen who happens to smoke a little weed.

Legalizing marijuana would erase the national debt and create jobs. It would generate additional money to better fund government programs, like schools, health care and saving the environment. Legalizing marijuana nationwide would be beneficial to patients with cancer, Aids, chronic pain and insomnia.

Tobacco kills thousands of people each year from lung cancer and alcohol causes a majority of fatal car accidents and damages you body but they remain legal. Marijuana is not as harmful as everyone has been made to believe. The majority of anti-marijuana campaigns are paid for by cigarette and alcohol companies thinking that if marijuana use were made legal, maybe not as many people would use their products to relieve stress and enjoy themselves. Studies have shown that smoking marijuana can actually decrease your chances of getting lung cancer. Abusing fast food restaurants will cause more harm to your body and national health care costs than marijuana.

Sources: TIME magazine, April 2009
associatedcontent.com

Can anyone rationally explain what would be so terrible about making marijuana legal? Are there really any viable down sides to this?

Here's how it's typically ignored:

1. Someone points out all the dangers of drugs...usually in terms of someone they know who has messed themselves up/died from drug abuse

2. ...then concludes that drugs must be illegal

That's the entire extent of the amount of thought behind the prohibitionist position, and on the surface, it sounds reasonable until you realize:

A. Drugs are *already* illegal and the problems persist. Prohibition simply does not work. It can not work. It has never worked, and will never work.

B. Because drugs are illegal, people do not seek medical help to the degree they otherwise would, due to fear of prosecution. When Portugal decriminalized, their drug abuse problems *decreased*.

C. The criminal drug trade brings with it extreme amounts of political corruption and violence, to include the toppling of states, and sponsorship of terrorism. If drugs were legal, they would be home grown or provided by respectable organizations rather than criminal organizations - gangs and terrorists are not the suppliers of alcohol for example. The outrageous profits create the criminlas, not the other way around.

Weed is good ...not the other ddrugs

And God said, Let the earth put forth grass, herbs yielding seed, and fruit-trees bearing fruit after their kind, wherein is the seed thereof, upon the earth: and it was so. And the earth brought forth grass, herbs yielding seed after their kind, and trees bearing fruit, wherein is the seed thereof, after their kind: and God saw that it was good.

And God said, Let grass come up on the earth, and plants producing seed, and fruit-trees giving fruit, in which is their seed, after their sort: and it was so. And grass came up on the earth, and every plant producing seed of its sort, and every tree producing fruit, in which is its seed, of its sort: and God saw that it was good.

Nothing can be found in any Bible that says anything bad, negative or condemns Marijuana, its use or cultivation.

The Federal government is limited to only those Powers explicitly and clearly included in the US Constitution. How could a plant growing in the ground be involved in interstate commerce? Unlike cartoons, plants generally don’t walk around on their roots.

Roots root them down,

They don’t travel around,

Therefore there is nothing interstate about it.

The Sacramental use of Cannabis is a common element in the Hebrew
religious traditions; so the modern understanding of
the day-to-day lifestyle of the first century AD is incomplete
without considering the religious, medicinal and industrial
use of the hemp plant common to the peoples of the time.

In addressing only the religious area, we find that the
sacramental use of hemp is woven into the religious lives of
the Semitic peoples and therefore either as Holy Anointing Oil
or as sweet spices, or as principal spices in the offering of the
Holy Smoke to the Father at the incense altar,
and that Jesus was raised from childhood in a religion
which used Cannabis as Sacrament.

This is supported by the following research conducted before
Cannabis was prohibited:

Cannabis use in the Old Testament was again
looked at in 1936, by Sula Benet. ... Benet stated that
the original Hebrew versions of the Old Testament and the Aramaic
translations contained references to cannabis by name; In
the original Hebrew text of the Old Testament there are references
to hemp, both as incense, which was an integral part of religious
celebration, and as an intoxicant. .

The name cannabis is generally thought to be of Scythian origin,
but Benet argues that it has a much earlier origin in
Semitic languages like Hebrew, ocurring several times in the
Old Testament. .

Benet also informs us of hemp's role as a sacred oil, stating
that in Exodus 30:23 God commands Moses to make a holy anointing
oil of myrrh, sweet cinnamon, kaneh bosm, and kassia.

He continues that the word kaneh bosm is also
rendered in traditional Hebrew as kannabos or kannabus
and that the root kan in this construction means reed or hemp, while
bosm means aromatic.

This word appeared in Exodus 30:23, Isaiah 43:24, Jeremiah 6:20,
Eziekiel 27:19, Song of Songs 4:14.

An ancient Hebrew religious requirement was that the dead be
buried in hemp (referred to as Kaneh) shirts (Klien 1908).

For some unknown reason this word disappeared from the text
and has been mistranslated as calamus..

'The error occurred in the oldest Greek translation
of the Hebrew Bible, Septuagint in the third century B.C.,
where the terms *kaneh, kaneh bosm were
incorrectly translated as 'calamus'.

And in the many translations that followed, including
Martin Luther's, the same error was repeated.'.
**( from 'Cannabis and Culture',
Vera Rubin Editor, and 'The Book of Grass',
Edited by Andrews and Vinkenoog ).

To put this in perspective, Ex.30:23 is a recipe for a anointing
oil so Holy that it was the means by which Moses was directed
to make the altar, the Ark of the Covenant, the tabernacle and
the Aaronic priest hood MOST HOLY. What with can the Holy
be made Holy? Moses used an ointment made in part of Cannabis

to make the Holy Most Holy.

The context of this scripture describes how this oil is to be
used to anoint the altars for incense and the burnt offering,
the Ark of the Covenant, the tabernacle,
and the candlestick to make all of them MOST HOLY.

And thou shalt sanctify them, that they may be most
Holy: whatso ever toucheth them shall be Holy. And thou shalt
anoint Aaron and his sons, and consecrate them, that they may
minister unto me in the priest's office. And thou shalt speak
to the children of Israel saying, This shall be an Holy anointing
oil unto me throughout your generations. Ex.[v.29-v.31]

Thus Cannabis along with myrrh, cassia and olive oil were the answer
to Moses to the question of, 'can the Holy be made Holy,
even Most Holy?'. Therefore to the Hebrews of the time Cannabis was
worthy, viable, and good enough to be a principal spice for the
consecration of even the Ark of the Covenant.

Cannabis is Sacrament, if it was good enough for Moses,
it's good enough for me. Besides, if God didn't want us to use it for it's many medicinal qualities, don't you think he would send a plague of locusts and not the DEA? .. Many Blessings