Drug Prohibition

//The United States has seen a drop in the rate of drug abuse over the past 20 years of more than a third. The current overall rate of abuse is roughly five percent of the population. // The problem with this argument is that it is a lie, and doesn't even prove your point that drug laws reduce drug abuse. Assuming it was true, it is not controlled experiment proving drug prohibition reduces drug use. It is an observation that drug use has declined, but there is no evidence that this is due to stricter laws. There could be any of number of reasons that drug use has declined, including the devastating affects of drug use. Everyone assumes that people don't use drugs because of the law, but never even consider that people could just be smart enough to avoid drugs because of their devastating effect on their lives. . http://www.whitehousedrugpolicy.gov... In 2001 52.8% of people ages 18-21 had admitted to using an illegal drug, which seems to prove your stats wrong. If that high of a percentage has used drugs, despite the law, I would say that proves the laws aren't working. 16% of people in the same age group admitted to using marijuana in the past month, while only 1.9% admitted to using cocaine in the past month. This disparity did not occur because cocaine is more illegal than marijuana, it occurred because cocaine is a devastating drug, while marijuana is a harmless drug; proving that the drugs themselves prevent use rather than laws. One could argue that this disparity occurred because of the decriminalization of marijuana in recent years, but that doesn't explain why, in 1979, when marijuana punishments were the same as cocaine, the same disparity existed. Bottom line: drug laws could not logically prevent drug use. First of all, if drugs are as bad as you and everyone else suggests, then there is no need for them to be illegal in the first place. If the consequences drug use, which includes addiction, brain damage, lung cancer, and even death, can't prevent a person from doing drugs, a drug law will certainly not succeed either. //In 2000, the federal drug control budget was around $11.5 billion, in 2002, the federal government spent less than $19 billion on drug control. When speaking of federal dollars those are miniscule amounts. // I would first point out that the cost drugs I was speaking of was not necessarily the cost to the tax payer. The costs of drug prohibition include any consequence. That being said, the federal government drug prohibition spending is only about half of the total amount of overall government spending; after adding State and local government spending, the amount is $40 billion. These numbers do not include the amount of money tax payers spend on the almost half million non violent drug users kept in prison each year. //The New England Journal of Medicine has estimated a 10 fold increase in the number of cocaine addicts were it to be legalized. This has actually been demonstrated in communities where the use of marijuana has been decriminalized. Those communities witnessed an increase in frequent marijuana use of at least 600 percent. // . http://www.drugwarfacts.org... The New England Journal of Medicine can predict what it wants, but predictions aren't facts. The facts are that since marijuana has been legal, the Netherlands have not seen a dramatic increase of marijuana use, and have, in fact, actually seen a decrease in the amount of children using marijuana. The amount of marijuana users in the Netherlands is much lower than in the U. S. , despite its decriminalization. //A Justice Department study found that those under the influence of drugs comitted murder at 6 times the rate of those simply looking for a way to get drugs. // This study doesn't provide any insight to why these murders occur. There are many hypothesizes explaining why people under the influence of drugs are more likely to be convicted of other such as murder. One hypothesis is that a criminal under the influence is much more likely to get caught and convicted the offense. Another hypothesis is that the murders tend to be drug users. Therefore, just because a murderer uses drugs, doesn't mean that drug users are murders. As I've already stated in my first argument, these drug users could be committing crimes because they are enforcing their property rights. //One need only watch an episode of COPS to see how overburdened our police officers are already just dealing with run of the mill drunks. Adding legalized drugs to the mix would create an ENORMOUS need for more and more officers, jailers, etc. The anarchy you seem to think would suddenly disappear would not. It would increase. // There is no reason to believe that they wouldn't be as overburdened if alcohol was illegal. Society may be overburdened by the use of alcohol, but the prohibition of alcohol only made the burden worse, hence its repeal. Obviously, the overburden of police is much milder after the repeal of Alcohol prohibition; otherwise alcohol would still be illegal. Bottom line: The illegal trade of drugs creates much more crime that the drugs themselves could ever create. This has been proven by alcohol prohibition and drug decriminalization in various other countries such as the Netherlands. Your prediction that the amount of crime will increase if drugs are legal is not supported by history, science, logic, or criminologists. Most criminologists agree that crime would decrease if drug prohibition was repealed. //On this point, I would submit that the criminilization of drugs is not because it might harm YOUR body but the overall harm to and burden upon society. // Just because a government says drugs are bad for society doesn't give it the right to prevent a person from using them. For instance, teen pregnancy and single motherhood are both extremely bad for society. Does that give the government the right to prohibit a person from having sex out of wedlock? Of course not; because restricting a person's sexuality is an infringement on personal liberty. Personal liberty can never be infringed because somebody else says it is bad for society.