I'll add some more cons:

-Heavy or daily use of marijuana affects the parts of the brain that control memory, attention, and learning. A working short-term memory is needed to learn and perform tasks that call for more than one or two steps.

-This will lead to less people graduating and less people working, off setting (by A LOT) any possible income from taxing marijuana. It will actually add to the deficit, not reduce the deficit.

- Long-term studies of high school students and their patterns of drug use show that very few young people use other illegal drugs without first trying marijuana. For example, the risk of using cocaine is much greater for those who have tried marijuana than for those who have never tried it. Using marijuana puts children and teens in contact with people who are users of other drugs. So there is more of a risk that a marijuana user will be exposed to and urged to try more drugs.

-There have been over 7,000 published scientific and medical studies documenting the damage that marijuana poses. Not one study has shown marijuana to be safe.

Marijuana is the most used illegal drug in the United States . Nearly 69 million Americans over the age of 12 have tried marijuana at least once.
Today's marijuana is 10 to 15 times stronger than it was in the 60's.
Reaction time for motor skills, such as driving is reduced by 41% after smoking 1 joint and is reduced 63% after smoking 2 joints.
Data has shown that people high on marijuana show the same lack of coordination on standard "drunk driver" tests as do people who have had to much to drink.
The daily use of 1 to 3 marijuana joints can produce the same lung damage and potential cancer risk as smoking five times as many cigarettes.
Marijuana is the second most common drug, after alcohol, present in the blood stream of non-fatally and fatally injured persons.
Marijuana is a complex material containing 421 chemicals, 60 of which are only found in marijuana.

Most of you teenagers who want your drugs so bad will have some excuse or other way to rationalize every point I have posted here. Bottom line, no matter how you try to rationalize it, marijuana will negatively affect your family relationships, your academics, your mood, your desire to work, your recreational activities, and more.

Recreational use by responsible adult is not the issue here. We are talking about the effects on teenagers and the irreversible effects it has on their future.

you think legalizing pot will solve our countries problems? youve obviously smoked yourself retarded... pot is bad for you anyways silly boy

Legalizing weed will help the economy by providing jobs for growers and retailers. It'll aid in going back to the use of Hemp for many plastics which is cheaper and more effecient then current methods. It'll stop drug cartels in mexico and columbia from getting money from our citizens and once taxed will provide an entirely new revenue stream for the US government. Not to mention all the pain relieving effects associated with it for terminal illness. Add to the fact that Alcohol is retarded worse for your body then Weed and there is no reason it shouldn't be legal, other then the white mans stigma that it's a poor black mans drug and that drug companies don't want it competing at a national legal level as their pain pills.

Pot related deaths in history = 0

Alcohol related deaths = 1000s every year.

What about all the lazy pot-heads who aren't working because pot is legal now?

Even if you raised taxes, they'll just raise spending. :c

Pots bad mmmmmkay