Why?

The question of the day is why legalize marijuana? What are the benefits and are there any negatives? There are of course pros and cons to every issue but in this case the pros seem to outweigh the cons. Through the course of this blog I hope to find out conclusively, at least in my opinion, why or why not the legalization of marijuana is a good thing. Going into my research I am a proponent of legalization so it may surprise you to know that I have never used marijuana so legalizing it will not help me directly. I think that legalizing marijuana will have health and economic benefits. And honestly it really won't change the number of users that much. Marijuana seems to be easy enough to find based on the number of people I know that are habitual users or that have just tried it. According to the national survey on drug users and health over 40% of the population age 12 and over have used marijuana at least once. That's 97.5 million people! (http://www.whitehousedrugpolicy.gov/drugfact/marijuana/index.html) With numbers like these it seems like legalizing marijuana wouldn't do much to the current amount of users. Also with that amount of people if marijuana was legalized a tax could be imposed that could boost the economy, provide for welfare, and start paying off the enormous amount of debt accumulated. Along with the economic benefits there are also very present health benefits. For example marijuana can slow down the effects of Alzheimer's and help cancer patients deal with the pain of chemotherapy. It also causes the "munchies" which will make people with these diseases want to eat. So these are my thoughts going into the matter. Hopefully during my research I can find out if legalization will cause any dire consequences or if it will help the economy and health without any negative consequences. So any thoughts on the matter, what do you think, do the pros outweigh the cons?