This isn't any old weed.
This is M&S weed.

Would legal drugs be cheaper, definately - Illegal drugs are ridiculously inflated prices. The NHS pays about 1/35th off the price of street price of most street drugs. Allowing for a massive scope for Taxation. No one is going to risk smuggling cocaine, cutting it and dealing it, when a company can buy it straight from source in bulk, and ship it legally.

Also the major cause of problems related to drugs are generally in their illegality and cost. Cheaper supply means less of a problem with drug related crime (crime committed to obtain drugs), and less of a burden on the tax payer - as the ability to gain tax from an untapped resource.

Harm Reduction - Improved quality, the difference between Drug Dealer and Drug Dealer PLC is required by law not to conform to quality standards. The biggest killer of drug users is variable quality of cut drugs. User beware, you know what you're getting its down to you.

Drug Outreach - Treatment for Addicts and outreach programmes work much easier when with legal markets. Alcoholics are much more likely to seek help than drug addicts.

Legalised drug market means less prisoners and less street crime, but more importantly a significantly lower bill for enforcement. Currently the bill for customs, police, treatment, crime to fund and education programs runs to 9-15bn, to prevent a 5-8bn market - The war on drugs efficency varies, with customs placing hauls at 10% and the Police claiming its less.

The War on Drugs is lost. We spend a fortune, and effectively create an illegal market which has been a serious source of funding to Crime and 'Terrorism' for the last 36 years. Drug use has risen, the drugs have gotten cheaper and more available over that period of time. Currently the market is pretty much a case that those who use drugs can obtain them anyhow, and those that don't have generally made the choice not to.

Taxation and a legal outlet means control of the market, improved quality control, less crime, more revenue.

The downside of course would probably be more addiction (as a number, rather than percentage - ) and an increase in drug use (particually in the first stages of legalisation). However using the taxation to support Drug Related Services and cheap affordable drugs would be a significant factor in reducing the poverty of life standards experienced by addicts (Heroin, as used by the NHS is 1/30th the price of street equivilants, and pure).

The question really is not whether Cannabis should be legal or illegal, but why we choose to have illegal recreational drugs (ie its about morality vs pragmatism).

"One Nation Under God, has turned into One Nation Under the Influence of One Drug"
[Link]

Or Iraq....

The world drug trade is one of the largest global markets outside of Oil and Arms (and often a source of provision of the later).

However to reverse the prohibition of drugs and switch to legalisation would probably require a UN proposal, as all member states are signed up against the illicit drug trade under a 1938 act. The best, I think, any government can do is decriminalise (and possibly the Amsterdam route). Sadly the UN Illict Drug body is myopic in the extreme, making the UK look positively liberal...

Third world countrys would likely benefit - not least by avoiding long running armed conflicts and instability funded by Drug Trafficing, as well as a fair market driven price.

Its worth noting that synthetic versions of both Cocaine, THC and etc exist.

"One Nation Under God, has turned into One Nation Under the Influence of One Drug"
[Link]

legalize it
the price and quantity has got silly now to us smokers

skunk and the like should be illegal. but normal dried stuff straight from mother earth ...wtf should tell another human being they can't smoke or eat it?

wrong.

alcohol is advertised as the golden tonic around stadiums...TV football and so on and yet it has helped ruin families and aids male testosteroned youthful fights on Saturday nights.

weed never does that to anyone. just makes them hungry.

I don't even understand why we are even questioning why it should remain illegal. and I don't even smoke it I've had like 10 joins in my 39 yr life span.

Legalisation (of some sort) really seems an inevitability here now - you've got to imagine political parties will start running with this soon; public perception of cannabis has changed massively in recent years, now that we actually have access to the facts, and it will be an easy vote winner for whichever party gets on board first.