More deaths will occur on Colorado roads due to Marijuana intoxication, some will kill individuals and families in the other cars.
More families will break up in Colorado due to the increased use. More children, who are innocent, will have to be placed into foster care than before.
Crimes will increase in Colorado, especially robberies and break-ins. As time goes on more of these will increase in violence as the desire for higher highs consumes the perpetrators.
I wonder if the enrollment in the “agriculture” programs at state colleges is soaring?
My prediction:
Any problems associated with marijuana will be ignored by the media.
Your same predictions were made about 10 years when Colorado legalized pot with the MM program, bringing growers out of the woodwork and increasing the availability and use of pot around the state.
The predictions haven’t come true, yet. We shall see what happens next.
My friend, who has a license to grow medical marijuana in WA, now says that she opposes full legalization. She now admits that regular marijuana use among teenagers causes permanent damage to cognitive thinking abilities. She knows that it is true because she has seen the results in her own family.
What she cannot see is that daily marijuana use causes the same damage to adult brains. It just isn’t permanent. The adult brain seems to be able to heal itself with 6 -8 weeks of abstention.
The effects of the marijuana use have made this person extremely unreasonable and argumentative. It is destroying her marriage and driving away her friends. She just blames everyone else. It is like her brain has just lost the filter that kept her from saying whatever popped into her mind.
Pot does not increase violence or crime(at least in the traditional sense).
The primary problem I see is just another way to lose the younger generations, allowing them to legally waste away.
Have you ever known a pothead? Although I do not indulge myself, I've known many, and had many close friends who did/do over my whole life and I've seen them in many various stages of "high". They're biggest collective offenses are raiding the fridge, being a bit lethargic and not being overly punctual.
Alcohol is more dangerous and cigarettes are wayyyyy more addictive. The cost of prohibition is the heaviest burden on the rest of us in money and rights. d:^)
The people who pushed for legal pot in Colorado have said that they now want to legalize cocaine and heroin.
Everyone in CO who has wanted to get stoned has been doing so... it's been that way for decades. In fact, the illegality of it probably makes it that much more enticing to adolescents.
And all those criminals will simply move onto pushing harder, still illegal drugs, as well as circumventing any marijuana taxes or regulations. And they'll have a growing population of potential customers ready to march through the gateway seeking a greater high than marijuana offers.
An economy and society built around hedonism and "getting high" offers poisonous consequences for the individuals who partake in it and for society as a whole. These people are a danger to themselves, their families, their co-workers and everyone around them. The natural vices leading to this kind of a society are constantly moving forward. If you don't have a strong effort with the power of law enforcement to push back in it, those forces will win and corrupt and corrode the entire society, creating huge and growing burdens even on those who don't partake in the drugs.
We’ll see more dangerous drivers on the road, more people unable to hold down a job, more people dropping out of school, higher medical costs, more abuse of the welfare system, more people being bad and inattentive parents, less people starting families at all, more people facing bankruptcy, more people entering the gateway drug spiral that leads to death (e.g. Amy Winehouse and her eventual death by horse tranquilizer), and more people wasting their time instead of working on being creative, inventive and innovative members of society. This will inevitably lead to a weak society that is ripe for being taken over and subjugated by foreign powers, ones who actually kept their anti-drug laws in place and influenced their citizens to be productive and responsible. Intoxicants are destructive, corrosive, offer nothing of value and should be fought by every sector of society.