In response to people saying marijuana is bad

Do you understand the medical benefits of it?  Or are you just going to evidence what you were told as a child?  The medical properties of marijuana are unlike any other medicine on Earth.  Part of the reason it isn't fully legalized today is because the government earns a lot of money from pharmaceutical companies, and because it's a plant, pharmaceutical companies cannot claim it as their own and tax it as such.

The death count per year is less than the death count per hour of alcohol or tobacco individually.  Even prescription drugs, which the governments classify as safe enough to legalize, cause more deaths per year than marijuana ever has, and we as a species have been in contact with it for hundreds (if not thousands) of years.

The reason Cannabis  as a whole is not currently legal in the USA is because of other companies fighting the government to criminalize it, as it ruins their profits for paper as well as clothing material.  It is legal as a plant in it's not "marijuana" form almost everywhere else.  The marijuana plant is legal as a medicine in most States (of the USA) as well as other countries, including the one it neighbours to the North, Canada.  In fact, the Canadian government controls the regulation of marijuana throughout the country for medical purposes.  Instead of having a dispensary on every corner like in California, we must pick a government sanctioned producer to obtain our product from.  The reason the government only allows certain companies to produce it is to make sure there is quality control, and so you don't have Joe on the corner selling it to you with loads of chemicals on it.  Mass-producing also reduces the costs tenfold.

Now unlike in the USA, in Canada you cannot just tell your Doctor, "I have a headache and need marijuana."  You must have a long list of pharmaceutical prescriptions that have not worked for you, or have caused side effects, as well as medical documentation of your illness(es).

The people who tell you it is a gateway drug are very mislead actually.  The reason it is commonly said to be a gateway drug is because it is currently illegal.  Because it is illegal, you have to talk to people who sell other illegal products to obtain it.  Obviously their goal at the end of the day is to make profit, so they will try to convince you to buy their more costly products.  You'll never see someone smoke a joint and proceed to crave crack, or meth.  People choose those because they want to either get fucked up completely, or they were somehow pressured into it.  Marijuana itself did not cause them to "gateway" into harder drugs.

There is plenty of proof already in the USA that removing the illegal aspect reduces the uses of other drugs, as well as underage use.  By taking the profits out of the wrong hands, you get people who sell only marijuana, and not all black market goods.

Feel free to look up all the facts, if you continue to not believe me.  But I guarantee that you will not find anything against my arguments.