In the US, All drugs should be legalized

Thank you 16Kadams. I hope this is an entertaining round. Introduction My opponent uses three main arguments to support his case that drugs should be illegal in the US; legalization leads to more users, that it would not prevent smuggling, and that it would increase crime. I shall rebut each in turn, and the provide counter arguments to demonstrate why legalizing drugs is the only tenable position. I would note at this point that con's argument is well sourced generally by con, but severaly lacking in the vital areas. His arguments also contain many non-sequitors and assertions without warrant causing his contentions to fall flat and offer no credible weight. I would also like to discuss the BoP. Every law must have justification otherwise it is pointless and profligant. Therefore if Con fails to make any susbtantial arguments, it must be assumed that drug legalisation should be considered the logical option. Before getting to the meat of the arguments I would like to address C3. To give it a place with the rest of the arguments would be to give it credence far above its station. To those who are reading this late at night (or early in the morning - in which case go back to sleep), the argument that since the US government is incapable of legalizing drugs so therefore shouldn't is irrelevent and false for a multitude of reasons. The first is that the resolution clearly states the drugs should be legal in the US, not that the US government should make them legal. Therefore the mechanism by which this occurs is utterly irrelevent. Secondly the assertion that because something can not happen, it should not is a fallacy, namely the"is-ought" fallacy[1]. Thirdly, the assertion that it is impossible is unwarranted. To repeal the agreement would be perfectly possible for the US, considering its rather significant influence on the UN. (In addition the treaty is mostly concerned with legal protection for the states which make it illegal for the purposes of extradition or other international concerns [2]) C1 My opponent argues that more people would use drugs if they are legal My simple response to this: is so what? This argument is begging the question. Why should the state be concerned with people choosing to harm themselves freely? All my opponent has shown is that the governments interference with this industry is causing significant market distortions. My opponents reference to detterence theory assumes that detterence is beneficial or desirable. This is a completely unproven assumption. C2 This argument was incredibly weak. Con makes several unproven assertions which fly in the face of basic economics and common sense. His conclusive assertion is that making drugs legal would not prevent smuggling (read black markets). For the record I do not support a tax on drugs so the assertion that there would still be a black market for drugs is bizarre. The black market would be completely unnecessary. Even on fairly heavily taxed goods like alcohol, the black markets are relatively limited [3]. Black markets can only exist if there are significant barriers to the "white" market [4]. In this case the barrier is the legality of the drug. Therefore cartels which rely on the illegality of drugs to ensure their existence in the black market, would either have to become legitimate corporations, or they would fail to compete in the market. C4 - Drug legalisation would increase crime Actually it is trivial to demonstrate the opposite being true. In fact seeing as non-violent drug related offences accounted for 1,663,582 arrests in 2009, it seems rather obvious that there would be much less crime (for those who haven't had their coffee, legalizing drugs would mean these people are no longer committing a crime by using drugs and thus the crime stats would fall). My opponent also makes the hilarious assertion without warrant that "If legalization increases users then crime would increase". He is suggesting that because a certain number of people who committed crimes used drugs, that this suggests that the drugs caused the crime. This is known as a post hoc fallacy [6]. I am pretty sure that most of those criminals breathed oxygen, but it would be foolish to determine this as a causual agent of their crimes. Counter arguments These shall be split into two halves: why it is practical to legalize drugs and why it is ethical to legalize drugs Economic Costs Cost of the war on drugs Every year the war on drugs costs the US taxpayer 44 billion dollars[10]. It is estimated that the opportunity cost of keeping drugs illegal is 76 billion dollars [11]. This is an unnecessary burden on the US tax payer. One could afford to buy every American a decent amount of weed with that kind of money. Cost of keeping so many non-violent individuals in prison As stated earlier, a huge number of people in jail (22% of prison population [9]) are there on non violent drug related offences [5]. The costs of keeping so many people in jail would be significant. Given that the total cost of the prisons is $68,747,203,000 [9], being able to reduce the prison capacity by 20% would result in large cost reductions. Cost to the users of drugs Heh. Making drugs illegal allows the black market to impose higher prices than normal market influences would dictate. This creates unnecessary costs for the drug user population. Ethics The basis of the ethical system I shall be using is the non-aggression principle. For reference I derive this from argumentation ethics. For time reasons I shall not go into great detail here, unless my opponent contests these ethics as unreasonable. The Non- Aggression principle (here's a trippy song for a fun explanation [7] or here for a slightly more comprehensive explanation for those not fond of trippy videos [8]) The non-aggression principle states that, simply, that it shall be legal for anyone to do anything he wants, provided only that he not initiate (or threaten) violence against the person or legitimately owned property of another. That is, in the free society, one has the right to manufacture, buy or sell any good or service at any mutually agreeable terms. It is trivial to see why drug usuage is not inherently unethical. One has self-ownership, and usuage of any susbstance on oneself, no matter how harmful, is moral. However, for another agent, in this case the government, to employ physical force against someone despite them not violating the non-aggression principle, would be unethical. Hence making drugs illegal is unethical. To conclude, my opponent has made no compelling case for keeping drugs illegal, whilst I have demonstrated that there is a strong moral and practical case for legalising drugs. [1] http://www.iep.utm.edu... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org... [3] http://en.wikipedia.org... [4] http://www.wisegeek.com... [5] http://www2.fbi.gov... [6] http://www.iep.utm.edu... [7] http://www.youtube.com... [8] http://www.lewrockwell.com... [9] http://en.wikipedia.org... [10] http://blogs.reuters.com... [12] http://en.wikipedia.org...