Originally Posted by sunnyside

Some of the common arguments for legalized marijuana are:

-people use it to rebel and therefore wouldn't if it was legal.

-it would reduce the prison population

-it costs so much to enforce

-would reduce presence and wealth of drug dealers

-extra tax revenue

But my question is does that hold? Especially in the case of the first argument it would seem that the people using to rebel would simply move on to some other drug. Similarly the drug dealers would move to trying to push other drugs. If they succeeded in promoting their new markets it would eliminate the advantages of enforcement cost and the prison population because the money and cells would simply be used on users of a different drug.

Similarly would tax neccesarily go up nearly as much as predicted? If people switch to a new illegal drug it wouldn't. Nor would it go up if people simply switched from alcohol to marijuana.

If there is a shift to different drugs that would be a large disadvantage. Marijuana is fairly harmless, but other drugs are not. So the "rebel" set would now be seriously hurting themselves and the pushers would also be doing more damage.