Marijuana Nothing

I know I am gonna get a lot of backlash for this blog, me being a Democrat and all, but I just don't think legalizing marijuana for mass sale and leisure use is a good idea at all. I have no problem with medicinal marijuana used to treat certain ailments like MS that is prescribed by a real doctor, but anything short of that is a no in my book. People always argue that decriminalizing the use of marijuana would ease some of the problems of enforcing drug laws and save tax payer money, but I believe just the opposite. My senior dissertation is on this topic and the statistics and the health problems of marijuana use are scary. First off, marijuana is a proven gateway drug (means that the use of this drug will lead to the use of harder drugs when a person can no longer attain the same level of high from the gateway drug) and legalizing it for leisure use would open a whole new can of worms as far as drug enforcement goes. And we all see the problems that alcohol has. So now instead of people driving drunk and killing people, they can drive high and kill also:) Wonderful. I hope you speak sarcasm, because it's like my third language. Not only will you have to worry about people driving under the influence of marijuana, but under the influence of other drugs like cocaine once they graduate from marijuana use. Then we'll be spending even more tax payer dollars to build more prisons to hold all these people, and we'll also spend more money on fighting to keep the other drugs that are still illicit off the street and out of the hands of people. If there is one thing I have learned about people, it's that they are never satisfied. Once you give them one thing, they move on to the next. Then 10-15 years down the road we'll be debating whether or not cocaine should be legal. It never ends. Allowing marijuana to be legal and sold in stores like cigarettes (which we all see the health issues that has brought as far as cancer) is a bad idea and gives too much lead way to other possible problems. I don't care if you do collect taxes off of it. The expenses to society way out weigh any possible financial benefits of it.