I agree with most of what you said and I think weed being illegal does more harm than good. However, one cigarette wont give you cancer - Im not sure if the wording was poor or thats what you think. The fact is, although cigarettes increase your risk of developing cancer its unfair to say "you will get cancer" or one cigarrette can give you it, such a small quantity will not increase your risk of developing cancer by much at all. The case for alcohol in your argument is similar to weed, the lethal dose of vodka for most people is a little over a litre, which is a ridiculous amount to drink on one night. Similarly, the lethal dose of marijuana is much higher than most people have in one dose.

The point is, using any of these drugs once is very unlikely to kill you or have lasting consequences although in large amounts all of them can, alcohol can of course do this the most easily.





One argument you often see against legalization of marijuana is that it is seen as a gateway drug to other more dangerous illegal drugs. Although this is the case, surely part of the reason that it acts as such an efficient gateway drug is that it is illegal; having smoked weed means a person has tried illegal drugs and presumably not been caught and as a result they go on to try other illegal drugs with the thought "I didnt get caught that other time and I was fine so itll be fine now too" not only this, but they will also now be in contact with people with access to drugs and could probably get a hold of another illegal drug. So by legalizing weed and making it less of a common route to trying other drugs, the utlisation and impact of other illegal drugs could be reduced