There have been lots of views and opinions surrounding the arguments whether marijuana should be legalized and if tobacco should be made illegal. The reasons for marijuana not being legalized are similar to the reasons people want tobacco to become illegal. Only the danger that tobacco provides is more intense than the danger marijuana.

Marijuana’s short-term effects include temporary problem with memory and problems with learning. It also causes temporary distorted perception (sounds, time, touch etc.), trouble thinking and solving problems. For some people smoking marijuana causes loss of motor coordination. But compare it to the short-term effect that tobacco produces.

Tobacco’s short-terms effects are a lot more serious health wise. When a person smokes a cigarette, the body responds immediately to the chemical nicotine in the smoke. Nicotine causes a short-term increase in blood pressure, heart rate, and the flow of blood from the heart. It also causes the arteries to narrow. Carbon monoxide reduces the amount of oxygen the blood can carry. This, combined with the effects produced by nicotine, creates an imbalance in the demand for oxygen by the cells and the amount of oxygen the blood is able to supply.

The comparison of the short-term effects of both drugs obviously shows that tobacco is more dangerous since tobacco has sudden drastic internal health changes.

The long-term effect of marijuana is that marijuana smoke contains some of the same cancer-causing compounds as tobacco. Tobacco has more cancer-causing compounds than marijuana does thus tobacco is more dangerous.

The long-term effects of tobacco are well known, but not in details. It is now well documented that smoking can cause chronic lung disease, coronary heart disease, and stroke, as well as cancer of the lungs, larynx, esophagus, mouth, and bladder. In addition, smoking is known to contribute to cancer of the cervix, pancreas, and kidneys. Researchers have identified more than 40 chemicals in tobacco smoke that cause cancer in humans and animals. Smokeless tobacco and cigars also have deadly consequences, including lung, larynx, esophageal, and oral cancer. The harmful effects of smoking do not end with the smoker. Women who use tobacco during pregnancy are more likely to have adverse birth outcomes, including babies with low birth weight, which is linked with an increased risk of infant death and with a variety of infant health disorders. The health of nonsmokers is adversely affected by environmental tobacco smoke (ETS). Each year, exposure to ETS causes an estimated 3,000 non-smoking Americans to die of lung cancer and causes up to 300,000 children to suffer from lower respiratory-tract infections. Evidence also indicates that exposure to ETS increases the risk of coronary heart disease.

Researchers have found that tobacco smoking is a greater hazard than smoking marijuana, and that the dangers of smoking marijuana is just as dangerous as drinking alcohol. But smoking tobacco is more dangerous than both of them thus should be made illegal. And if marijuana is about the same effect as alcohol, and alcohol is legal, marijuana should be legalized. Of the three drugs mentioned in this essay, marijuana is the only one that can be used for medical purposes. Marijuana should be legalized and tobacco should be made illegal.