 Former Drug Enforcement Administration official Peter Benzinger recently came out against the movement to legalize marijuana and medical marijuana. He laments that legalizing marijuana is a disaster and claims that it's harming young people, it's harming industry and business, and it's causing more deaths of fatalities on our highways. Indeed, in a recent study, a blood test of those involved in highway fatalities there was an increase from 4% to 12%. However, such positive blood tests are only indication that someone smoked pot within the last week, not that they were high. Indeed, in this study, only half of the states that were studied had liberalized their marijuana laws. And indeed, in the liberal states where marijuana laws were relaxed, the number of deaths on the highway actually declined precipitously. And this makes sense. Liberalizing marijuana laws is going to lead to fewer highway fatalities because marijuana and alcohol are thought to be a substitute, and alcohol causes many more highway deaths and accidents. There's also been a recent study that Benzinger points to that emergency room visits involving marijuana have increased. But in virtually every case, this was multiple drugs also involving marijuana or it involved synthetic marijuana, a product which wouldn't be on the free market. Benzinger also claims that everybody from President Obama right on down the line claims that marijuana is harmless. But of course, no one claims that marijuana is harmless or without its risks. So that's just not true. Indeed, marijuana prohibition hurts young people. If they get caught, they lose their student loans. They don't qualify for certain jobs. And if their father is arrested for selling marijuana, they lose their father to prison. And how about business and how about the economy? Well, legalizing marijuana is good for the economy. It creates jobs and it's creating new products as we speak. In terms of the highway, legalizing marijuana has been shown in study after study to reduce accidents and fatalities. And it's also been shown to reduce violence such as assaults and rapes. So legalizing marijuana also reduces the scope and size of government. And that's good policy and that's the Mises view.