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The main argument for legalizing drugs in America is that there would be no crime built around the drugs (I'm thinking mostly of heroin and cocaine.)
My main argument against legalizing is safety - it's really easy to die from just using heroin/cocaine once. For example, remember Len Bias the basketball player? I think he used hard drugs just once and he died. Not true for pot or alcohol. Is this in fact the main reason why most people don't want to legalize all drugs?
I've read that Americans, because of culture, tend to overdo things, and that's why legal cocaine/heroin in Holland is not a big problem. They know when to stop - also, there are more desperately poor people in America who use drugs to escape from reality.
ALL drugs should be legal far as I'm concerned....Your main argument makes no sense to me...how do you know that next burger you have at McDonalds won't clog your artery completely....
Death or no death, most or all of these drugs, including pot, can have health consequences. As long as we have tax funded health care, as a taxpayer, I can't support liberalization of drug laws.
In fact, once we go to 'single payer' health care, which some argue is already baked into the cake, we should probably think about waging wars on junk food, lack of exercise, and booze, to go with the wars on drugs and tobacco that we already have. Replete with federal police agencies, modeled on the DEA.
There was a long time in America when all drugs (including petroleum with rattlesnake heads in it) were legal.
Addiction was seen as a personal weakness, but it was all a matter of degree- anyone could drink themselves senseless daily, and no one else cared if they did so. Liberty and freedom ain't pretty sometimes.
Health consequences are always present with everything. Our national addiction to fats, sugar and salt is plenty of evidence there. We are killing ourselves with our abundance, and that is a very old lesson that has been seen in other times and places.
Make everything legal and let 'em sort it out for themselves. We are at the stage where treatment is not only more successful than incarceration, it is also much, much cheaper than housing convicts. Addicts will always either die from their addiction or will snap out of it. Give them the means to snap out of it and some will recover. Those who don't will always live short lives of grief, but their criminality will be lessened if their dope of choice is cheap enough.
Obviously, our urge to tell others how to lead their lives hasn't worked. There is a part of humanity that simply loves to get stoned, just as there are baboons and elephants and insects that love to get drunk eating fermented fruit. We can't change nature.
"The sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinion of others, to do so would be wise, or even right...The only part of the conduct of anyone, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.”
In the absence of the welfare state this principle should be sacrosanct. Sadly, when you give up responsibility you give up liberty. Wutitiz has a point. In the absence of the welfare state legalizing all drugs is a no brainer to a classical liberal such as myself, just like very liberal immigration policies. Recognizing that we do not live in a nation following classical liberal principles complicates both these issues. I still think we would be better off legalizing all drugs. I believe the damage done by the black market exceeds the damage done by any possible increase in drug usage.
Death or no death, most or all of these drugs, including pot, can have health consequences. As long as we have tax funded health care, as a taxpayer, I can't support liberalization of drug laws.
In fact, once we go to 'single payer' health care, which some argue is already baked into the cake, we should probably think about waging wars on junk food, lack of exercise, and booze, to go with the wars on drugs and tobacco that we already have. Replete with federal police agencies, modeled on the DEA.
A simple BMI tax will take care of food and exercise. It will tax the fatties directly and not tax those healthy individuals who occassionally have a cheeseburger.
I am hoping Michelle don't frequent this forum.
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