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It will increase, not decrease the crime rate, and those crimes will be worse than marijuana pushing. It creates a state that draws drug users to it and the state will have to pick up the costs of those who abuse the drug instead of merely using it. It lessens the public approbrium of drug intoxication. It exposes the children to pushers wanting still to illegally push marijuana. I haven’t even mentioned the medical aspects of regular marijuana use or drug intoxication, particularly on young people.

All of these things you mention, with the exception of the increase in crime, are already occurring or have occurred in society as it is now, and there is no putting that genie back in the bottle. Quite frankly, I think that the criminalization of marijuana and other drugs is part of what made them so popular. It's the forbidden fruit aspect, I suppose.

As for the increase in crime, I simply don't see that happening, nor do I see any reason that it would happen. Has there been an increase in crime since the medical marijuana laws went into effect? Given the laxness of the law, it is a de facto decriminalization of marijuana. Has there been more crime? I don't think so.

The rest of the deleterious effects of marijuana still exist while marijuana is illegal, but add to that the legal and constitutional abuses of the drug war, and the creation of a huge black market source of income for the cartels, and you have a triple whammy. Legalization is worth a try.

I think we all should vote our consciences.

“Proponents of legalization suggest that the experiences of countries such as Great Britain, the Netherlands, and Switzerland prove the efficacy of legalizing or decriminalizing various types of illegal drugs such as cocaine, heroin, and marijuana. They maintain that because such drugs are legal, these countries have fewer addicts and less drug-related crime. . . . The statements of the legalizers here are empirically untrue. As we discuss each country in turn, it will be shown that legalization did not work in any of them.”

If you want the information backing this conclusion, go to www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/debates/myths/myths4.htm. I think experimentation has been tried and we ought to take lessons for those experiments. The article discusses the increased problems created by addicts who are getting younger and younger, crime increases to support the more common addictions, not to mention the problems created by “drug tourism”. I am not willing to gamble our children’s future on it.