Yes, vices are bad stuff. But do we ban everything that can negatively impact someone's well being? Does that expand to junk food? Soda? Vehicle use? Smart phones?
You know what else can affect education?
Video games. Smart phones. Texting. All types of other stuff.
If you think pot being illegal now makes it hard to get, you are, again, delusional.
The rate of teens who think pot is "fairly easy" or "very easy" to obtain has remained virtually unchanged since 1975.
This is a clear indicator that the War on Drugs is a failure. We've spent BILLIONS of dollars, money that could've been spent on improving our crumbling bridges and roads, our failing schools, or any number of other uses, and instead we spent it on banning a substance that has resulted in the drug being just as easy, if not easier than ever, to obtain.
Telling a teenager "Don't do this. It's bad" does not work. If we treat them like the young men and women they are, and tell them the TRUTH instead of using scare tactics, maybe we can make some headway here.
Generally, if you don't care about marijuana's effects on education of the young folk and the general well-being/appearance/standard of society, then yea. You are kinda insensitive about it. You end up being one of those people saying "Well, I don't see it affecting me if it becomes legal, so why not?" and you give advice saying "If you hate it so much, avoid it." However, you don't realize that there are not-so-smart people that succumb to the terrible effects of marijuana and you could care less. But to one's own I guess.
The education system is broken, no doubt about it. Marijuana and alcohol use isn't even in the top 10 of why though.
You're operating under the assumption that it being illegal has deterred use. It clearly has not. If you legalize it, you at least take the stigma off it and allow a legal distribution to combat the illegal distribution.
See, this is the difference I have with liberals. Liberals want to use their own morality to guide society and ban vices they deem immoral, but allow vices that they personally are fine with. I'm more of the persuasion that all vices are vices. All can potentially be abused. People can become addicted to video games just as they can become addicted to pot (because pot itself, as I've documented before, is not phyiscally addictive). But should we ban video games?
To tell you the truth, that is not that far-fetch'd. Clearly, we have supressed by the law for so long that once it does become legal, I'm afraid but people are going to go crazy and let lose. Not like what you exaggerated, but it will happen, probably briefly. But how brief is the real question, could it be mere days or few weeks? Or actually be at least a month or two? That sounds like serious damage imo.
Clearly, alcohol prohibition where only those over 21 can purchase alcohol has worked because we don't have a bunch of young kids going off to college and getting completely wasted and not knowing how to deal with alcohol at all...
oh wait, that's actually the opposite of what happens.
We already promoted being responsible with alchohol and safe sex. That is why there are health class promoting (and even sometimes giving away) condoms and alcohol brands already say drink moderately. That is also not working. Like how abstinence>safe sex, illegal marijuana>responsible marijuana use.
Actually, high school pretty much demonizes alcohol use. In another thread, a high school aged poster claimed that two drinks can make the average adult male drunk and claimed his health class as where he got his facts from. All too often, that is the norm in our system of high schools rather than the exception. Alcohol use is generally demonized and again it's something that clearly hasn't worked.
It should remain illegal until they find a way to remove that horrible smell.
You are honestly one of the worst posters in the Debate forum. Even when I agree with your positions, they're backed up by the worse "me! me! me! me! me!" logic.
When appropriately used and strictly used for medicine/painkiller purposes, no duh. But otherwise:
http://alcoholism.about.com/od/pot/a/effects.-Lya.htm
http://www.kriskris.com/is-weed-bad-for-you/
Yes, alcohol and pot can be bad. How willing are you to extend these same attitudes to video games, fast food, and soda?