Drugs should be legalized in the United States

1. Drug Use A. Deterrence Con acknowledges that the criminalization of drugs isn't a deterrence for most people. Why implement a counter-productive policy that's ineffective by my opponent's own admission? Next Con notes that his statistic isn't referring only to HS seniors but those aged 12 - 17. My point still stands considering it's limiting the statistic to those no older than 17, when many people don't smoke pot until after HS. Nevertheless I concede my mistake; I also provided the statistic for HS seniors (Con's mistake confused me). However, my point still stands with the right general figure. My argument was that harsher penalties do not necessarily lead to a decrease in drug abuse. Con mentioned that harsher punishments for marijuana crimes were enacted in 1992. A NESARC study of over 43,000 people found "Overall, marijuana abuse or dependence rose by 22 percent from 1992 to 2002" [33]. Con then advocates "dropping my source" since it's "heavily predicated on teens voluntarily reporting marijuana use." By that logic, you should also drop Con's entire argument and all of his statistics pertaining to teenage marijuana use. Since that's the only demographic he's talked about thus far, that would be ALL of his statistics (reminder: he cannot make any new arguments in the last round considering I cannot respond). B. Availability Con's argument was that higher availability of drugs would result in a plethora of problems. On the contrary I provided evidence that legalizing drugs in other places led to less crime, violence, disease and death as a result of these policies. Con did not respond to this, and instead mentioned that only those over 25 received free heroin from the government, etc. That might be true, but has nothing to do with my point: that just because legal drugs are available doesn't mean society will come crashing down. In fact many see positive results. I never said that we shouldn't implement policies in a similar fashion to the other successful models I mentioned, so Con's rebuttal is negated. 2. Impacts A. Financial Burden First, I pointed out that we live in a country which socializes costs. Welfare recipients are also a financial burden yet are still entitled to their personal liberties just as drug users are despite their burden. Second, get rid of socialized medicine and this problem becomes obsolete. Third, you can heavily tax drugs to compensate for the cost, just as the government does with cigarettes for the same reason [34]. Moreover, Con tries to downplay my point insisting that more people get sick from drugs than anything else. However, the number one leading cause of death in the U.S. is heart disease [35]. Over 34% of Americans are overweight and more than 33% are obese [36]. This means that people's personal choices very much pertain to their medical needs, and the system does not discriminate. You can either rectify the system to where this burden isn't an issue, or you can acknowledge that it's not problematic to our current system. Finally and most important on this point, Con completely ignored the argument from economist Jeffrey Miron that legalizing drugs would inject 78.6 billion dollars into the U.S. economy. B. Hurting Families Extend my arguments; this has nothing to do with the government. C. Work Productivity Con never details what specific illegal drugs the statistic is referring to so extend that point. Also extend my point that an employer can fire a bad employee or one in violation of their contract. D. Harm I mentioned that the government cannot restrict personal liberties on the basis that people MIGHT abuse them. Con says the government should take protective measures to ensure they don't cause harm to begin with. By that logic, we should criminalize knives because people MIGHT use one to commit a crime. It's obvious we cannot run a functional legal system that way. Con never argued against my point and instead just stated his counter-point - not why his point is preferable. There's nothing for me to respond to. 3. Role of Government Con says the govt. should interfere because of the financial and harmful burden drug users place on society. Extend my 2A - 2C points. 4. Impact of the WOD A. The WOD Term Con says he would not advocate a WOD. In other words he would do nothing to prevent the growing, transport, use, confiscation or penalty for drugs? That's what the WOD refers to. Now I can use Con's own arguments against him. In point 1A he talked about the importance of deterrence. How can he push deterrence as an important facet of criminalizing drugs, but suggest he'd make no effort to wage a war on drugs to deter use? At best this is a hypocritical contention depicting flawed reasoning on my opponent's part; at worst it's a completely useless objection that doesn't pertain to my arguments. B. Black Market Con completely drops this huge contention of mine despite me repeating it several times in a cohesive manner. It's unfair to have to waste character space explaining it again. Please extend all of my arguments, particularly the quote by source 24 from the last round. The gist of it is that a black market exists for drugs due to prohibition that creates devastating repercussions. Such a market would not exist to anywhere near this extent if drugs were decriminalized. Con's response has been that a market would exist for underage users (which I explained is pretty insignificant), and that "the cartels have access to over half of the market even if you affirm." I have no idea what this is referring to or why there would be cartels in the first place; Con hasn't explained as such. Con also dropped my point about the CIA/govt. corruption. C. Drug Rates N/A D. Kids and Prison Extend my argument about drug use not violating other people's rights directly. Not only is Con's "taxation without representation" argument not pertinent, but we DO have government representation (even if it's crappy). Also, Con's counter-example ones again mentions stealing which I've explained repeatedly is a violation of another's right to their property. E. Racism Con repeats that racism exists all over the justice system. I concur, but explained that drug policy in particular goes out of its way to disenfranchise a particular race by focusing on particular suspects and communities in a significantly disproportionate way. This is particularly pertinent due to the fact that once again drug use is a victimless "crime" unlike other offenses. F. Medical Benefits First, you'll notice that Con never denied any of the medical uses I've cited and sourced as being proven to work. Instead, he presents possible side effects or negatives of using certain drugs. This is no different then how every single legal drug advertised on television comes with an extensive list of possible negative side-effects. Still they're proven to have possible positive uses just as illegal drugs can, which means Con's rebuttal negates nothing. I can also provide more proof of positive medical uses [37, 38, 39, 40]. Further, scientists have ranked the most dangerous drugs based on harm to self and harm on others. Alcohol which is legal scored as the most dangerous drug - even above heroin and crack [41]. Professor David Nutt, Britain's former chief drug policy adviser reports that riding a horse is more dangerous than taking ecstasy [42]. Con says my links proving exaggerated dangers of drugs are broken; every single one of them works for me. Con also attributes a false contradiction to me regarding heroin's addictiveness. Finally, he says people can go to rehab for heroin even with drugs criminalized. My point was that rehabilitation is more important and useful than prison; people should be treated like addicts and not criminals when addressing their drug problem. Thanks for this debate, Con. Sources: http://www.debate.org...