Drug use, legal or illegal, is one of the largest entities in the USA. People are addicted to all kinds of drugs, from caffeine to nicotine to prescription pills to illegal narcotics.
Some, for various reasons, want to legalize marijuana. Their views on that are their own. I personally torn about it. I can see all the potential revenue from taxes and what not, but at the same time I see almost all of my friends getting high from weed, acid, mushrooms (shrooms), and other drugs. So all "profit" ideas aside, I see my friends dropping out of school, spending almost all their money/paychecks on drugs or money/paychecks on gas so they can go get the drugs. A lot of my friends have also gotten arrested AT LEAST once for a drug related charge. My friends, and those similar to them, love listening to music straight from the 60's. Bands like, The Grateful Dead, Phish, The Allman Brothers Band, Bob Marley, Lynyrd Skynyrd, etc. Not saying there is anything wrong with these artists, I happen to love all of these bands/artists. But I think a lot of people I see try to recreate a lot of that "Woodstock feeling" that you would have gotten straight out of the 1960's. Listening to music/bands like this while getting high without a care of the effects of the drugs on their body. Some just do it because their friends are, and they want to "look cool." Don't get me wrong I don't think there is anything wrong with people simply enjoying this music because they honestly enjoy it, and not because its their "getting stoned soundtrack(s)."
I honestly think that drugs, like pot, are truly is the "gateway drug". Many of my friends have started with weed and then moved to acid, shrooms, and various other harder drugs. So I am very wary of those who are pro weed legalization, seeing how so many people start with weed and then move on to other harder drugs, and quite honestly are becoming drug addicts at younger and younger ages, and going down that long, hard, risky, and potentially deadly road. I have seen far to many lives ruined, lost, or on that definite route because they started doing drugs for whatever reason, no matter their drug(s) of choice, how/why they choose to start, even if they are that "hippie stoner" I was referring to earlier.
Two years ago a well loved guy in our town (high school aged, and no names are mentioned out of respect to the family) was murdered, his murderer is still at large. Not to long after his death they arrested a kid who used to sell him pot. A lot of people I have spoken to since the demise of someone so well loved, think that his murder was drug related. I'm not sure if it was or not, but it is a definite possibility. So not only can drugs kill a person on the inside, change their behavior/thinking pattern/etc, it can get them killed too.
To make a long story short, I don't think we should continue letting our citizens use drugs, they should have tougher penalties.