How many lives would be saved if the marijuana prohibition was lifted?

Marijuana costs 400 dollars a pound to produce, but sells for 2500-3000 a pound. It is such a profitable crop to sell and traffic, simply because it's illegal. If it were legalized and regulated (no being noticeably high in public, no driving while intoxicated), the profit margins would be much less, and violent drug cartels wouldn't have nearly as much money from marijuana trafficking and dealing (this absence of profit would NOT be spent on guns, transportation for trafficking other harder drugs, or otherwise furthering their illegal, violent lifestyles.)

Here's a couple excerpts from an article I just read about what happened when Portugal legalized not just marijuana, but other illegal drugs such as cocaine, meth, and heroine.

The paper, published by Cato in April, found that in the five years after personal possession was decriminalized, illegal drug use among teens in Portugal declined and rates of new HIV infections caused by sharing of dirty needles dropped, while the number of people seeking treatment for drug addiction more than doubled.

"Judging by every metric, decriminalization in Portugal has been a resounding success," says Glenn Greenwald, an attorney, author and fluent Portuguese speaker, who conducted the research. "It has enabled the Portuguese government to manage and control the drug problem far better than virtually every other Western country does."

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/...

Dancing smurf - Marijuana has never been proven to cause cancer of any kind, actually recently, it has been proven to reduce tumor growth: http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNew...
It also does not lead to suicide, or paranoia, at least not in the long term. People can be paranoid and anxious while high, but this is often because of a subconscious guilt they feel when they smoke.

None. Unless all drugs were legalised and the production regulated.

You know the strange thing, the drug cartels would not want that. They make money because it is illegal. Legalise is and you drive them out of business!

Portugal is a small isolated (other than Spain)country with no other countries on their borders.
"The Western Powers" you speak of - have signed treaties w/other countries to keep laws on the books making growing & selling 420 illegal. Personal possession and use of it is legal in certain areas. Making it legal like beer and cigarettes does make some sense, but those treaties come first. Everyone would have to agree and decriminalize the growing and selling. Not going to happen for awhile.

Thousands a year. Too many innocent people and children get caught up in the violence associated with smuggling this drug. Look at the violence at the border now,majority of it is associated with marijuana which is the largest commodity smuggled.
I would be for legalizing and regulating everything and putting the cartels out of business.

Oh, Wow, man... What a good question...

I'll have to get to it tomorrow...

Right now I'm enjoying my buzz...

""I think we can learn that we should stop being reflexively opposed when someone else does [decriminalize] and should take seriously the possibility that anti-user enforcement isn't having much influence on our drug consumption," says Mark Kleiman, author of the forthcoming When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment and director of the drug policy analysis program at UCLA. Kleiman does not consider Portugal a realistic model for the U.S., however, because of differences in size and culture between the two countries."

"Peter Reuter, a professor of criminology and public policy at the University of Maryland, like Kleiman, is skeptical. He conceded in a presentation at the Cato Institute that "it's fair to say that decriminalization in Portugal has met its central goal. Drug use did not rise." However, he notes that Portugal is a small country and that the cyclical nature of drug epidemics 鈥?which tends to occur no matter what policies are in place 鈥?may account for the declines in heroin use and deaths.

The Cato report's author, Greenwald, hews to the first point: that the data shows that decriminalization does not result in increased drug use. Since that is what concerns the public and policymakers most about decriminalization, he says, "that is the central concession that will transform the debate." "

Promising result, but the US is not Portugal.

Reduce tumor growth, yes, but an ACTIVE INGREDIENT in Marijuana. Not just Marijuana plant as whole. Study says nothing about other ingredients in it that may be bad or carcinogenic. Unless at home people purify this active ingredient at home, I wouldn't use weed to cure any cancer.

You can't claim it is Marijuana that is reducing tumor growth when it is very specific chemical in it. Not combination of every chemical in Marijuana.

Equally you wouldn't say cigarrette is good for you just because one ingredient in it is beneficial.

http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNew...
http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNew...

I would argue none and I would argue that the amount of lives lost would increase. Reason being marijuana is 20 x more carcinogenic than cigarettes and long term use has been linked to paranoia. Legalization would result in high cancer rates for oral, upper digestive, brain, and lung cancer along with a higher suicide rate. This would result in a higher death rate plus increase in health care costs. Once health care costs increase more people will do without health care and a percentage of people who do not seek health care due to cost would die from not seeking treatment. Overall I feel legalize marijuana is a bad idea.