The War on Drugs is Unconstitutional, immoral, and a complete failure

As far as the supreme court goes, I will have you note that the supreme court has changed its own rulings before. Our laws are not all 100% constitutional, else there would not be much need to ever change the laws. Therefore, I assert that the fact that drugs are illegal does not automatically dictate that the law is constitutional. Drug addicts affect at least 10 other lives detrimentally? A plausible notion, but I can affect 10 others detrimentally by coloring my hair green, but that's not grounds for making hair dye illegal. But you're not talking about hair dye, you are talking about "Ruined personal lives, ruined marriages and the effects on children eat at the very core of our society". Ruined personal lives are none of the governments concern, I have the right to ruin my personal life as much as I want. The marriage example is similar, although I guess you could say the partner's life is ruined too, but the partner should have been smarter than to marry a drug addict in the first place. People marry other people for horrible reasons all the time, even when everyone else can tell that one or both of them have no chance of being faithful. The responsibility, therefore, must lie in your choice of wedding. I will say that ruining childrens lives is never a good thing, and drugs could certainly do that, but I think you must demonstrate that the WoD is going to be effective at diminishing this occurence, before you assert that The WoD is justified BASED on this occurance. My points are that the WoD is unconstitutional, immoral, and a complete failure, and to refute any of these based on the facts that drugs are bad, you need to at least show that the WoD is holding these effects at bay. "Could it not be argued that the government has a duty to protect non-drug users from those effects? " I suppose it could, although the strategy they use should probably work if they are going to do it at the cost of billions of dollars and taking away people's civil liberties. I will concede the arguments in your third paragraph because I put my foot in my mouth in my first round on Christianity, although your last sentence, where you propose that we are NOT on the path to dictatorship, I will address. I think we are on the road to dictatorship, when we pass laws based on what our legislators feel "family values" ought to be. While morality and justice remain absolute, family values are not absolute, and differ significantly over space and time. Most people agree generally on basic family values, granted, but unfortunately there are those among us that would use this practice for tyrrany. Consider an atheist, in the government, passing laws based on his idea of family values. He thinks that the church ruins the family because it purports non-scientific ideas to the public, that can ruin a child's sense of reason, and justifies outlawing church practices. Then he spends billions of dollars on the War on Church, and, instead of getting a 2/3rds vote in congress, declares war anyway. Churchgoers are put in jail, fined, and their work histories reflect misdemeanors and felonies due to dangerous practices of "superstitious reasoning". To make it worse, scientists have now linked cases of church going with poor high school test scores, and the scourge of churchgoing is seen as a threat to basic human values and dignity. When Churchgoers complain about this, people tell them that the "government has a duty to protect non-CHURCHGOERS from those effects", because the children are innocent and deserve a chance. As for your fourth paragraph, those medicinal marijuana patients worked hard to overturn their states unconstitutional statutes, and through the legal system, succeeded in doing so. It was the federal government who arbitrarily decided to step in and terrorize these people. Now, while the federal gov't does have the authority to overrule the state gov't, this was still a very questionable act to say the least. Since when does our government use raids in this fashion? I thought it was the bad guys they did that too, not a bunch of dying cancer patients with leg braces and crutches, doing what they can to make their last days in this life worth living. I am telling you that this whole situation is fishy. The chief of the (san francisco? ) police, back in 1990, stated that "we are in a war, and casual marijuana users are commiting treason, and should be taken outside and shot". This is the mentallity that I am addressing here; that we are letting a bunch of zealots run around abusing civil liberties so they can keep their jobs as crooked drug police. I can't prove it, but I highly suspect that the drug war is being perpetuated by people for one reason, and one reason only: money. I believe that there are a lot of evil drug manufacturers, outside of the US, that are in collaboration with our own evil drug warriors here at home. Once in a while, a big bust is made (which makes the price of the drugs soar, btw) in order to make it look good, but they are in it together. How can we be sure that the drug warriors aren't taking moneys from the drug dealers? How could they NOT be, if you think about it. Corruption is not something that happens in one gov't and not another. Corruption is a statistic that affects all gov't's , and the best you can do is to be technically precise with the laws to minimize it's occurence. You can never fully eradicate it, all you can do is stick to the books. The WoD presents an amazingly clear and present danger to the effectiveness of our gov't, because of it's moral and constitutional ignorance. "The fight to legalize marijuana for medicinal purposes is a ruse on the American public to open the door to legalize all illicit drugs". I will actually agree with you on this. Personally, I am a little sick of the "medicinal marijuana" arguments, because we should be fighting for a complete legalization of all drugs. I think that people who are fighting for medicinal marijuana are only helping to cheapen the fact that the WoD is completely immoral, unconstitutional, and a failure. I guess it is a step in the right direction, but it is NOT working, as the raids suggest, and it is not a strong enough assertion of justice. Sometimes it makes me feel like it is not a ruse on the American public to open the door to legalize all illicit drugs, but a ruse to make us feel like justice is on the way, when it's not. It's kind of like those electric cars, that every year for the past thirty years they have been coming up with one, just to make us feel like we are about to become clean and energy independent, but the cars never hit the showrooms. You talk about better cancer medicines. What could the logic possibly be, to stop a terminally ill cancer patient dead in their tracks for smoking weed, and then hand them another drug which is artificial, possibly WAY more dangerous to use, and not as satisfying to them? What would you suggest, doctor? "Drug addicts can effectively be helped while they are incarcerated". sigh. .. . Yes, let's see here. I've lost my job, can't get another one because of my record, and I've been fined and put in jail, not to mention harassed by the police and made an official criminal by society. Thanks for the help. Are you aware that a third of our prisons are filled with drug offenders? I think we'll have plenty of money to pay for my safe havens, when we quit spending it on the WoD and keeping drug addicts locked up. I wouldn't use the economy in your arguments against me because the possibilities are inestimable of how much money we could save on prison, direct WoD financing, and profit from marijuana sales and hemp products. Drug addicts spend Billions each year, which flies right out of our borders without being taxed. I disagree that I have not shown my case. I will keep showing it to you, if you'd like.