Drug Legalization

Thanks for finishing. P1: All he really does is re-use Portugal. He doesnt address my argument at all about this being one country, and how we cannot extrapolate the success of one country onto all 195. So we accept that this alone is not enough to say that everybody in the world should legalize drugs. Furthermore, as I stated in previous round, Portugal did not completely legalize drugs. They decriminalized, meaning drug use is fine but sale is still illegal. One of the reasons that could explain why Portugal's drug use didnt go up is because it was still illegal to sell drugs, therefore you retain the deterrance effect of jail in order to prevent people from getting drugs in the first place. However, my opponent advocates the complete legalization of all types of drug offenses. This means sale becomes legal, meaning people can be more open about selling drugs. If we fully legalize, it would be legal to sell crack or cocaine in stores just like people do with cigarettes. Imagine a world where people buy meth in Wal-marts. Thats what differentiates Portugal from what my opponent wants to do. And obviously, with drugs right in front of people in a legal system, use goes up. But even just a regular decriminalized (Portugal) system might not work. As previously states, this is one country out of 195. Not enough to draw conclusions. P2: "Users will have more access to medical treatment". Users have access to rehabilitation and medical systems now. And if people are severely ill from taking the drug, they can go to a hospital even if they're in jail, so this is irrelevant. Further, treatment programs exist in the criminal justice system, see drug courts (1). He talks about poisonous additives in drugs. Source 2 details that there is virtually no threat of this. Drug dealers dont want to "cut" drugs and have all their customers dying on the streets. There is no motive, plus the source shows that the threat of adulterated drugs is exaggerated. Then on purity. This argument is based on the false assumption that there is a "correct" dose of a drug. We see that this is not true because of their severe health damages that they cause (described in source 1 round 1), regardless of whether they took the "right" amount or not. Finally, he drops my argument about being able to solve overdose and HIV without legalizing. C3: "Anti-drug propoganda site." Well, I wouldnt think any drug site would be "pro-drugs". However, he doesnt address my common sense argument at all, about drug users obviously being worse workers. When our evidence shows opposite things, it comes down to reasoning and argumentation on mine and his part, and he doesnt give any of this. In short, he cant actually tell you why people who use drugs aren't less productive. Like I said before, just think. Do you want drug abusers working for you? Gangs: Yes, preventing society from being consumed by drug abusers outweighs the deaths from the drug war. If all these drug users get sick and flood hospitals, then with the evidence I have in round 1 which details that hospitals are already flooded, it might be possible that we may not even have room for all these new patients. At that point, you have a bunch of ill drug abusers dying in the streets. You also get an increased number of people dying from the drugs themselves, which will make up for the lives no longer claimed by gangs. Police: He seems to say that the drug war makes rights violations necessary. But again, enforcing any law sometimes requires violation of rights. Believe me, it would be great if we could gather evidence without breaking into people's houses, investigating their cars, etc. But we cant. We have to do these things to find information we need. Just because a crime can require violating the right to property to find evidence, it doesnt warrant legalization of the crime. Debate summary: Portugal is only one country out of 195, and its applicability this debate is also questionable considering they didnt even fully legalize. With completely legal drugs, availability increases and deterrance decreases, causing more drug use. This leads to all my impacts, which outweigh gang violence because the thousands of new people becoming ill or dying from drug use makes up for it. Rights violation are necessary to enforce any law, not just drug laws. I again thank LaissezFaire for the debate and sticking with it. 1. http://en.wikipedia.org... 2. http://www.drugscope.org.uk...