The only way we can restrict who buys cannabis is to legalise its sale. That way we have sanction over someone who sells to the underage or otherwise unsuitable. Right now, anyone whose got the money can buy cannabis and that is far from ideal.

It is true that you cannot completely eliminate the black market but when you look at alcohol prohibition in the US you see that it has reduced in size dramatically. In addition, the regulation around alcohol has worked to reduce the harms associated with it. Finally, as with alcohol prohibition, the dealers either change or lose their business. No one wants to buy from sketchy people on the street.

It is ludicrous to imagine a black-market for cannabis will not exist after legalisation. Anyone who can’t buy it legally will simply go to a dealer in much the same way they do now. Dealers will not accept the loss of their business and may even actively encourage young people to start using hard drugs as a way of compensating for their loss of income.

Just look at the huge illegal market for current legal drugs like alcohol...... isn't it huge? When was the last time you drank moonshine?

Most of the problems we see from drug use, either those caused to the individual or society, come from prohibition itself. Prohibition makes it harder for people in trouble to seek help. It makes it harder to communicate the dangers of drugs to drug takers and it creates a fantastically rich class of gangsters who will kill to protect their turf.

The problem with finding them and punishing them is that it extremely expensive, as is widely known because finding and punishing them is exactly what we are doing now. After 70 years of supply side intervention, drugs are still widely available and drug dealers are still here. The US has more prisoners per capita than anywhere in the world. You simply cannot lock up all the drug dealers and throw away the key. Where there is a great demand you will always find people willing to risk supplying it.

The American history during the period of "The Prohibition" (of alchohol) in the 1920's clearly shows how prohibition can increase the demand of a popular item. If people really want it there will be people risking to supply. This will result in black market violence between gangs for control of the supply and further enhance difficulties for people in need of help to seek it out.

Drugs cause huge problems and the answer is not simply to throw up our hands and abandon our young to the ravages of substance abuse. Prohibition might not be working in its present form but it is unacceptable to give up. And we definitely should not abandon a law because it makes gangsters rich. Instead we should find them and arrest them and punish them in such a way to dissuade anyone considering this a career path.

Drug use is a victimless crime. We have no right to legislate what someone can or cannot consume. Moreover, we have no ability to. Drug users will continue to take drugs regardless of the law. All the law does is create a system where people hide their use and feel guilty about taking drugs. This, contrary to popular belief, does not result in them stopping drugs but rather results in a binge culture where their drug consumption continues in an even more harmful way.

Alcohol and tobacco are both regulated. The laws attempt to minimize the harms associated with them. The same can and should be done with cannabis. Dangerous behavior such as driving high should be illegal but that doesn't mean all behavior involving cannabis should be illegal. Such blanket laws criminalize even the safe and responsible use of cannabis.

Drug users who drive endanger everyone who comes in their way, these are the victims of drug use. As are those people who love the drug user – and even the user themselves. Sometimes people need to be protected from their own behaviour, sometimes people are their own worst enemy. Therefore, we must legislate what people consume (just as we do with alcohol or tobacco) in order to protect the individual and the rest of society.

there is very little evidence that cannabis causes schizophrenia.

On a population level it definitely does not, infact it shows the opposite.

For example, during the last 50 years or so the rates of schizophrenia around the world have remained at 1% of the population. During this time the use of cannabis has grown enormously. This does not indicate a causal relationship.

Yes, many people who have schizophrenia also use or have used cannabis at some point but this does not mean that cannabis caused the schizophrenia.

It's worth nothing that 'cannabidiol' - a chemical that is a major component of cannabis is infact an anti-psychotic. Rigorous scientific trials have shown that cannabidiol is as effective as atypical anti-psychotics in treating schizophrenia. It also doesn't have many of the side effects other anti-psychotics cause. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0924-9338(09)70440-7

This may explain why people with schizophrenia use cannabis. They are self-medicating.

Cannabis contains chemicals called cannabinoids. We have know for almost 40 years that these cannabinoids kill cancer cells. Smoking cannabis has been shown not to cause cancer. Please see Donald Tashkin's studies which have shown this (the worlds most eminent professor on lung science). Sure 'smoke' can cause cancer, but clearly the anti-carcinogenic effect of cannabinoids is killing off old cells and stopping cancer from developing in the lungs of cannabis smokers. This is remarkable because illegal cannabis is often contaminated with all sorts of stuff that is carcinogenic. The solution to this is to regulate the cannabis.

It would be much better anyway if people vapourized cannabis, thereby removing the smoke and any potential cancer risk.

It can cause schitzophrenia and lung cancer

Alcohol causes more crime, abuse and costs to the NHS as well as society as a whole and it is legal, so why should cannabis be illegal?

Sure, you could argue alcohol should be illegal, therefore that must rationally be your position if you argue against legalisation of cannabis. Are you?

Parity would be a great start.

Unless you are suggesting actually alcohol is "better", "nicer", "less harmful", and so should be legal?

The real point is that we as a society choose to allow access to all sorts of potentially harmful activities and substances because we have free will - including over our own bodies.

Alternatively your point could mean that alcohol should be made illegal.

People who use hard drugs are likely to use marijuana; this does not mean that people who use marijuana are likely to use hard drugs.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/2538065.stm

Ok so you legalise cannabis.

Marijuana users think great! I can take cannabis legally now. So they start taking cannabis legally, complying to all the legal restrictions.

After a period of time, they've used so much cannabis that they no longer feel the high they are taking it for.

Where are they going to go to look for a high now?

I'll leave it up to your imagination.

Self-explanatory

Might be tenuous argument but just because smoking is legal does not mean that cannibus should be legal. More than 20% of the Adult population smokes (9.5million people)^[1] they took up smoking while it is legal and because it is addictive are not just going to give it up should smoking be criminalised. Essentially there is no choice even if the government did wish to criminalise smoking they could not because they would immediatly put an immense number of people on the wrong side of the law. With cannabis it is the other way round, people who smoke cannabis (or take it in any other way) do this in the full knowledge that it is illegal. Essentially government cant change its position on smoking so it cant be put as an argument for why cannabis should be legal as it might make sense to have smoking illegal.

1. ^ http://info.cancerresearchuk.org/cancerstats/types/lung/smoking/

it is high and is great for my health but not for yours. cannabis can cure my health but not yours. ps the only reason people hate it is coz of the price but if we legalise it, it will be like 5 pound a henry yeeeeeeeeeeee boiiiiiiiiiiii yours sincerly bob mcpheee

That kind of proves the point really

it can cause serious illnesses, for example dyrachaelessences

Yes but cannabis can also help medical conditions like rachaelstits

Both tobbaco and alcohol are physically addictive. Most scientific studies show that cannabis is not 'physically addcitive'. It's psychologically addictive but so are many activities such as gambling and playing computer games. These activities are not illegal.

Secondly, many people aren't aware of this but the risk of developing a form of psychosis is higher if you abuse alcohol than if you abuse cannabis.

There is even a specific type of psychosis that alcohol can cause, Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome.

"Chronic alcohol misuse can cause psychotic type symptoms to develop, more so than with other drugs of abuse. Alcohol abuse has been shown to cause an 800% increased risk of psychotic disorders in men and a 300% increased risk of psychotic disorders in women which are not related to pre-existing psychiatric disorders. This is significantly higher than the increased risk of psychotic disorders seen from cannabis use making alcohol abuse a very significant cause of psychotic disorders." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_term_effects_of_alcohol Tien AY, Anthony JC (August 1990). "Epidemiological analysis of alcohol and drug use as risk factors for psychotic experiences". J. Nerv. Ment. Dis. 178 (8): 473–80. PMID 2380692.

Both alcohol and tobbaco, even caffeine are more toxic than cannabis and all kill in overdose. Cannabis cannot kill in overdose, you'd have to ingest several times your own body weight in cannabis in a very short space of time to do. This is pretty much impossible.

The chemicals in cannabis are anti-carcinogens, i.e.- they protect your lungs against cancer. Granted smoke is carcinogenic, however you don't have to smoke cannabis, why not vapourize or eat it instead, thereby eliminated the risk of cancer?

In contrast it widely established that alcohol (especially binge drinking) and particularly tobbaco use causes cancer.

Thus, cannabis for some is a good alternative social intoxicant for many alcohol users. If many people replaced their alcohol use with cannabis, there would be less death and disease in the world.

The best way to keep cannabis away from kids is to legalise it. A coffeeshop has a vested interest in abiding by the law, for to not do so would mean losing a lucrative licence. What’s more, prohibition creates the kind of cannabis which can be damaging for young people. Growers choose skunk because they can sell it for more whilst risking the same penalties as less strong dope. Consumers choose skunk because they think that the strongest stuff is the best stuff. And anyone who tries to educate them otherwise is dismissed as simply another agent of prohibition.

There is no scientific evidence that cannabis use causes mental illness and the anthropological evidence utterly refutes it.

Holland decriminalised cannabis usage ~30 years ago.

1. They don't have higher rates of mental illness. 2. They have lower instances of children using cannabis 3 They have lower class A drug usage 4.They have a lower likelihood of progressive drug use

Please address the real world visible evidence when countering this point.

Super-strong cannabis is a major contributory factor in the rise of people suffering with mental health issues. Young people are most vulnerable and young people are most likely to use cannabis. Mental illnesses are irreversible and deeply damaging and we’ve got to stop the problems it causes by keeping cannabis away from kids.

Just about all heroin users started smoking first, so by this logic tobacco is the gateway drug. However, it is false to imagine that just because one thing was preceded by the other that this thing caused the other. Any connection between cannabis and hard drugs is made simpler by prohibition. Once drug users have started using one illegal substance, it’s an easy next step to take the second illegal substance. They can often find harder drugs from the same person selling cannabis (and coffeeshops simply could not do so). Finally, drug users become harder to reach when they’ve taken cannabis and found the warnings about it vastly overstated.

The vast majority of tokers do not go on to become smack junkies. The "gateway" theory is simply nonsense.

Except the anthropological evidence disagrees with you. in Holland where cannabis was decriminalised ~30 years ago, they have a significantly lower likelihood of progressive drugs usage.

Just about all heroin users started using cannabis first. This is true for cocaine and crack addicts too. We can’t allow more people to use cannabis for that would ensure we have more people using hard drugs with all the problems for the individual and society that would ensue.

The only reason to legalise cannabis is to reduce the harm it can cause to society and individuals. By legalising cannabis we gain more control over who buys it, we gain more control over who sells it and we gain more control over who grows it and how it is grown. We get more ability to warn people of the dangers of it and we are better able to keep it out of the hands of people for whom it can cause problems.

So are you arguing:

a) It's ok to allow the public to consume harmful substances as long as they bring in enough tax revenue?

Or

b) That the majority of the British public are fundamentally irresponsible, and so need the state to enforce the substances they are allowed to consume.

Could you also explain the apparent lack of harm caused by Holland decriminalising cannabis ~30 years ago when their per capita GDP in 2007 was 131% to Britain's 116% - higher than even Germany.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_European_Union#Economic_variation

Alcohol causes huge amounts of problems for society, why would we even think about legalising another substance which could cause even more problems. Alcohol is still only legal because the government could not function without the revenue it brings into the country as a whole (The UK Government revenue from alcohol was almost £11.5 billion in 1999/00. [Brewer's Society Statistical Handbook 2000 BBPA]

But if cannabis was legalised then new planning regulations could be used to make sure that cannabis was grown away from most if not all local communities especially the estates where problems with cannabis are bad at the moment.

by growing drugs in houses, they destroy the house and the community.