According to a myriad of surveys and polls, roughly 35 percent of teenagers have smoked weed by the time they graduate high school. According to my intuition and interaction with my peers, however, I give a conservative estimate that roughly 50% of teenagers have smoked weed by the time they graduate.

Marijuana generates billions of dollars in revenues each year for the brutal narcotics cartels in Mexico. Mexico, the world’s largest exporter of Marijuana, sends almost all of its crops to the US; a majority of the marijuana consumed in the United States comes from Mexico. Cannibus accounts for almost half of all the Cartel’s revenues. About 24,000 people have been killed in drug-related violence in Mexico since President Felipe Calderon declared war on the cartels in December 2006.

There are arguments that cannibus is the safe drug; it’s natural, so if it’s natural it must be good, right? Wrong. Now I don’t care about how it affects your health, whether or not your lung function decreases, or if you inhale more or less carcinogens than you would smoking cigarettes, or if it truly has never “directly” caused a death, I care about how it comes into your possession. You: the seller. You: the customer. You: the consumer.

Regardless of whether or not it is good for the user’s health or whether or not the user is incarcerated for its possession, as long as it still illegal, your usage of this substance will be supporting and letting continue those bloody drugs wars and organized crime; your fun little past time is killing.