Well i've been doin some research today and I told myself lets compare, weed, alcohol, cigarettes... You will be amazed at what I found out!!! Legalize It!


Death Ratio Of The U.S.:
1. Heart disease: 652,091
2. Cancer: 559,312
3. Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 143,579
4. Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 130,933
5. Accidents (unintentional injuries): 117,809
6. Diabetes: 75,119
7. Alzheimer's disease: 71,599
8. Influenza/Pneumonia: 63,001
9. Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis: 43,901
10. Septicemia: 34,136

Chemicals in Marijuana:
THC (delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol)
400 other known Chemicals (But other plants contain 400 chemicals as well)

Cigarettes: (These Chemicals Can Kill You) Over 4,000 Chemicals, 43 Cause Cancer
Benzene: Petrol Additive (carcinogen and is associated with leukaemia, used as a solvent in fuel)
Formaldehyd: Embalming Fluid (causes cancer, highly poisonous, used to preserve dead bodies)
Ammonia: Cleaner (Ammonia is used for cleaning utensils such as... Floor Cleaner, Toilet Cleaner etc.)
Acetone: Nail Polish Remover (This chemical is used in Nail Polish Remover)
Tar: (Can get drawn into the lungs and fill your lungs up thus causing cancer, and respritory issues)
Nicotine: Insecticide (One of the most addictive substances)
Carbon Monoxide: Car Exhaust Fumes (Odorless, tasteless, poisionous gas, can cause Carbon Monoxide Poisioning when taken in large quanities)
Arsenic: Rat Poison (Used daily to kill your household rodents)
Hydrogen Cyanide: Gas Chamber
DDT: Banned Insecticide
Lead: (Lead can be fatal when taken in large quanities, thus causing lead poisioning)
Napthalene: MothBalls (Ingredient in mothballs, mothballs are used to keep snakes, beetles and other insects off your lawn)
Cadmium: Batteries (Cadmium is used in most batteries, like the Nickle Cadmium battery in your computer!)
Butane: Lighter Fluid (Gas thats used in lighter fluid)

Alcohol:
Drinking Alcohol leads to loss of coordination, judgement, slower reflexes, distorted vision, memory lapse, blackouts
Alcohol can damage every organ in your body
Can cause cancer
Drinking large quanities of alcohol can lead to comas, or death
Even if your not drinking if your around people drinking you have a higher chance of getting hurt
You can't drive after one drink
Mixing alcohol with medications can cause death
Bad Breath
Addictive
Depresses your central nervous system
Makes you do things you normally wouldn't do, such as driving while under the influence of alcohol
ALCOHOL IS A DRUG
Extensive alcohol intake is likely to produce withdrawal symptoms, including severe anxiety, tremors, hallucinations, and convulsions
More than 100,000 U.S. deaths are caused by excessive alcohol consumption each year. Direct and indirect causes of death include drunk driving, cirrhosis of the liver, falls, cancer, and stroke.
Youth who drink alcohol are 50 times more likely to use cocaine than those who never drink alcohol.
Traffic crashes are the greatest single cause of death for persons aged 6–33. About 45% of these fatalities are in alcohol-related crashes.
Underage drinking costs the United States more than $58 billion every year — enough to buy every public school student a state-of-the-art computer.
Alcohol kills 6½ times more youth than all other illicit drugs combined.

Short Term / Long Term Effects Marijuana:
Bad Short Term Memory
Lowered Learning Abilities
Difficulty Thinking & Problem Solving
Inability To Drive: (Lower than drinking alcohol)
Distorted Senses, Sight, Hearing, Touch, Time, and Depth
Reduced Athletic Ability
Elevated Heart Rate
Anxiety, Panic Attacks
Cancer: (Smoke it moderately lessens the risk of getting cancer, moderately means a joint every few days!)
Dry Mouth: Kotton Mouth (Easy fix just drink liquids)

Long Term Effects Of Cigarettes:
Cancer: Cancer is an alternation in cells causing your cells to grow and spread rapidly.
Heart & Blood Vessel Disease: Carbon Monoxide gets into the blood and decreases oxygen going to the heart. The more you smoke the greater risk you have of having a heart attack.
Lung Disease: Bronchitis, Emphysema, higher risk of getting colds, pneumonia, and other lung infections
Gastrointestinal disease: Increases the acid in your stomache, can cause peptic ulcer
Gastroesophageal reflux: Stomache acid comes up into your esophagus.
Higher risk of bone fractures
Men have problems getting erections
Insomnia
Reduced Athletic Ability

Good Effects Of Marijuana:
Munchies: (Makes you eat a lot)
Sexual Stimulant: (Makes you wanna have sex)
Increase Mental Abilities: (May be different for others but some it will increase your thinking)
Safer to smoke marijuana than drinking alcohol
Reduce problems with glaucoma: (glaucoma causes you to lose your vision)
Relaxes
Improves Creativity / Imagination
Reduces Anger Issues
Reduces nausea from chemotherapy
Helps you eat and hold food down
Fantastic Antidepressant: (Less side effects than many prescription antidepressants)
Reduces stress

Facts and Info of Marijuana:
Marijuana may help ease symptoms of AIDS, Cancer, Multiple Sclerosis, Depression.
People really can't overdoes on marijuana (Small animals yes because they are smaller, but people NO)
Facts About Cigarettes:
Nicotine is more of a gateway drug, because kids get hold of cigarettes then they get addicted to them and there is the introduction of smoking.
Cigarettes cost the nation over $100 Billion per year in health costs!
Tobacco companies spend over $4 billion a year promoting their deadly product
1.3 Million people quit smoking each year, but about 48 Million continue to smoke
Tobacco is often the first drug used by young people, who then go on and use alcohol, marijuana, and other drugs!!

How The Economy Can Benefit Off Of Marijuana Being Legal:
The United States will flourish if marijuana is legal, even though there are many different strands of marijuana
there can be a flat tax for all of them just like how there is with onions, apples, carrots, lettuce etc... Just look at
any food produce that can be grown, thats the same for marijuana, we can sell marijuana in stores, such as gas stations,
medical facilities, drug stores, almost any local store. Marijuana is just like any produce you can grow it you can sell it
there shouldn't be a law against growing it or using it, it can benefit the whole country by it being legal, more than half
of the United States does marijuana illegally. If marijuana was legal we wouldn't have to spend money on housing inmates in jail
the average inmate costs $94.87, when you could just keep them out of jail. Just think how much money the whole country would save
if marijuana was legal, lets say 1500000 people go to jail for marijuana a year, for them to stay just one day thats $142,305,000!
Now if we didn't put them in jail for marijuana thats $142,305,000 more to spend on education, roads, medical etc. The government is
wasting money on putting people in jail for having marijuana, people who do marijuana just wanna do marijuana they
don't wanna bother anyone else. If marijuana was legal there would be less crimes over drugs, because people could just go to the store
and buy it instead of having to hide from the law to deal their drugs to get money under the table. When the government can just sell it
by gram, ounces, pounds etc. Anyways marijuana is less lethal than any other drugs out there like cigarettes, alcohol if you compare all the
data I collected you will find that marijuana is less dangerous than all of the others. If the U.S. is afraid of losing money they could just tax
it like how I said, and more money will come in, because if you think about it marijuana is just like apples, apples you can grow legally then you can
eat them without paying tax to the government, so marijuana you can grow and use it without getting taxed by the government so if marijuana isn't legal because
of that reason then what makes apples legal?

Websites:
http://www.drugs.com/cg/cigarette-sm...lth-risks.html
http://www.well.com/user/woa/fspot.htm
http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/exchange/node/1808
http://www.quitsmokingsupport.com/whatsinit.htm
http://www.quit-smoking-stop.com/har...igarettes.html
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/FASTATS/lcod.htm
http://www.allpotseeds.com/bad-effects-of-pot.html
http://www.alaw.org/tobacco_control/...e_smoking.html
http://www.freevibe.com/Drug_Facts/alcohol.asp
http://ncadi.samhsa.gov/govpubs/ph323/
http://www.gdcada.org/statistics/alcohol.htm
http://www.dc.state.fl.us/pub/statsbrief/cost.html

i'd love to see pot legalized, but the big pharmaceutical lobby will NEVER let it happen. if everyone could legally puff on a doob instead of taking a prozac, elavil, whatever anti-depressant of the day, all the drug companies would lose revenue. and big pharm has way to many congressmen and senators bought off to ever let pot get legaized

it seems as though the government is cracking down on pharmaceutical companies. pfizer was fined 2.3B dollars (largest fine ever given to a corporation from what i heard) for giving incentives to doctors that prescribe their meds over anyone elses...

that is just to keep the sheeple happy. 2.3 billion is a drop in the bucket to these jokers. the cig companies already made all that money back that they lost in teh big lawsuits, and it has only been about 10 years since the verdict