We should legalize marijuana. Firstly alcohol abuse kills 75,000 people a year, but yet in Texas you can buy it at age 21 no questions asked. Legal prescription drugs kill a hundred thousand people a year. Marijuana kills zero. The same pattern follows in crime and accidental death statistics. The U.S. Government is spending billions of tax payers dollars, just to hopelessly fail at keeping a harmless drug out of the Untied States, when instead we should be making money off of it and taxing it as we would cigarettes, or alcohol. It would help stimulate the Texas economy by creating thousands of jobs. More people would move to Texas. In California alone cannabis is a cash crop that generates $14 billion a year in medical usage. It would also lower the population of prison inmates which means that we would also save money on taking care of them. Hundreds of thousands of people are being arrested each year, charging them for a something that is legal for recreational usage in 2 states (Colorado & Washington), and legal for medical usage in 21 states. http://www.governing.com/gov-data/state-marijuana-laws-map-medical-recreational.html Medical Marijuana In 1972, the US Congress placed marijuana in Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act because they considered it to have "no accepted medical use." Since then, 21 of 50 US states and DC have legalized the medical use of marijuana. Proponents of medical marijuana argue that it can be a safe and effective treatment for the symptoms of cancer, AIDS, multiple sclerosis, pain, glaucoma, epilepsy, and other conditions. They cite dozens of peer-reviewed studies, prominent medical organizations, major government reports, and the use of marijuana as medicine throughout world history. May 20, 2014 a 19 year old teenager by the name of Jacob Lavoro from Round Rock, Texas could face from 5 years up to life in prison for allegedly making and selling pot brownies. "This case highlights both the absurdity and devastation of our nation's ongoing war on marijuana," Erik Altieri, spokesperson for the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws told HuffPost in an email. "While Colorado and Washington have ushered in the age of legalization, many states still harshly criminalize marijuana and hand out egregious sentences for its possession." The sentence hanging over Lavoro's head is especially absurd, Altieri said, because "recent polls show 58 percent of [Texas] residents support regulating marijuana like alcohol." If Lavoro were to be sentenced to life, he wouldn't be the only prisoner spending decades behind bars for marijuana crimes. http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/5353696