1st DDO Census Debate: Drug Legalization

Premise I: Pro's Case.I need to address an issue in Pro's case... Pro has the BOP here. Pro is proposing a change from the status quo, and therefore must prove that there must be a change.Argument I: Secondhand Smoke.Remembering that Pro has BOP. The fact that drugs are harmful is status quo. I don't need to state that drugs are harmful for it to be established. Pro must prove they are not harmful.Pro tries to claim that drugs aren't inherently harmful, and that it is a matter of circumstance that other's get hurt. He compares them to cars and guns, which aren't inherently dangerous. To start, cars and guns must be aimed at someone/something to do damage. Cars don't inherently hit people. The threat to other's is in regards to the user. Unlike smoke-based drugs. These drugs don't need to target someone, they have an areal effect. The secondhand effect is caused by the smoke, not the bad aim of the user. However, if you get a car that is badly built, and can hit someone because of it's own faulty guidance, and not the guidance of the user, that car would be illegal to use.The logic follows as such:P1) The smoke causes secondhand effects.P2) The drug inherently creates the smoke.C) The drug inherently causes secondhand effects.Pro's best example is that you can smoke in the privacy of your home. A number of studies done show that smoke travels far. Living in one's own apartment, the smoke can travel to all apartments nearby (1). Another study done by San Diego State University confirms this (2). In fact, smoking just outside of your home doesn't work either, despite having elements like wind and mass open spacing (3). The only way to prevent secondhand smoke is to never smoke, or restrict smoking to areas far from civilization. The problem with restricting drug use, as Pro claims we can do, is that is unenforcable. Unlike with prohibition, legalization poses legal threats to the ability to enforce mass restrictions on the level needed to prevent all secondhand smoke.A lot of Pro's case relies on consent to the secondhand effects. But a child living with parents who smokes does not consent to breathing in the smoke. As prior stated, there are 5 million children today who will die early because of smoke. Not one of them consented to that smoke. Even teenagers can't consent, as the age of consent is 18. The same principle applies to anyone who has to work beside a smoker. The 'Yes means Yes' law comes to mind. A law in California based on the principle that you must say yes to consent. Not saying no does not equal consent.Pro used the claim that prescription drugs kill more people. I want to note that his source (the only source for his round) is Mercola. Mercola is considered extremely bias and untrustworthy. (4). That being said, Pro's argument ignores that prescription drugs are used by almost 8x as many people (5,6), and the usage per person is FAR higher. I should mention that almost all death caused by prescription drugs are not caused by medical usage of the drugs, but by the recreational use of those drugs... The use that Pro defends. Medical Drugs also save millions of lives a year (7: This source also attacks Pro's Mercola source). Cocaine and Meth does not (both of which can produce smoke.)[1] http://tinyurl.com...[2] http://tinyurl.com...[3] http://tinyurl.com...[4] http://tinyurl.com...[5] http://tinyurl.com...[6] http://tinyurl.com...[7] http://tinyurl.com...Argument II: Economic Impact.Pro says the cost of regulation would not outweigh the costs of prohibition, but offers no source. His prior prior source leaves out how much would be spent on legalization when measuring saving. His sources also leaves out the prison case I made, which show's that legalization would not cut costs of law enforcement. In fact, Pro seemingly carried on as though I never made that argument. He claimed that my source didn't account for savings. I accounted for savings. I measured the costs against the savings in Round 2.Pro says my source lists $103.5 million across three years. This isn't true, and is misrepresenting what my study said. The study said that $103.5 million is planned for each year. In fact, another $29 million is planned for regulation enforcement, for a toal of $132.5 million each year, while revenue is just $118 million, for a $14.5 million loss (8).Pro's source claimed that Colorado spent $74 million on prohibiting Marijuana (9). That cost is far smaller than the $132.5 million spent to maintain a safe legalization. The cost of regulation will increase as usage increases, while the revenue decreases as the cost of the drugs goes down. The problem with Pro's source is that it's from 2010, before any state legalized Marijuana. Now that we have a state with legalized marijuana, we can see that Pro's study's speculations don't hold up.A lot of the costs are for educating kids on the usage of drugs, and on rehab. These are, in fact, regulatory costs, as regulatory costs include the cost of maintaining a safe legalization, and not just the costs of cracking down on misuse. These costs also leave out the cost of collecting taxes. Pro says that in his scheme, education and rehab wouldn't be accounted for. I'll hold him to this statement for later on. But first, let's address that this isn't about Pro legalizing drugs... It's about the US Federal Government legalizing drugs. They pay for rehab and for education, that's a status quo system they use. It's done for cigarettes and for alcohol. Pro has a lot of burden to prove that drugs should be legalized differently from how the USFG legalizes substances.Pro completely dropped the stats I posted for the amount lost to drugs. $180 bn - $300 bn in lost economy. $170 bn in medical costs. And $48 - $80 bn in lost taxes (equal to 03% of the economy). As well as the exponential loss in investment growths over time. Pro's savings (equal to only 00.5% of the economy) pale in comparison. We see this with alcohol and cigerettes, where the costs are 15x higher than the taxes revenue.[8] http://tinyurl.com...[9] http://tinyurl.com...Argument III: Economic Freedom.Pro's harm principle is based on the idea that the law should protect us from having our rights violated. The truth about drugs is that they are a violation of our most basic right... The right to say no. More important than the right to say yes to a product, is the right to say no before and after using it. Legalization allows companies to violate our bodily autonomy, and make us HAVE to buy their product, or face major physical withdrawals.The freedom of choice only exists if the choice to say no exists. Without it, the idea of choice is a myth.Rebuttal I: Benefits of Drugs.Pro must prove that drugs can be done in a safe way. It's not on me to prove they can't be. That being said, there is no safe way to inhale cancer-causing smoke into your body. And Meth is dangerous in all forms and uses.Even if drugs have benefits, they are outweighed by the long-term effects, including mental disorders, physical deterioration, and the loss of decades from one's life. I listed side-effects that perfectly contradict Pro's "benefits," and Pro dropped them.Rebuttal II: Harms of Prohibition.Taking into account that we have a character limint, when the Harm of Prohibition case came around, Pro threw out over 12 seperate arguments in a compact list, along side the rest of his cases. This is blatant shotgunning. I can not reasonably respond to each and every argument in the huge list he shotgunned. Despite that, I did addressed all but one case. Crime and Terror were accounted for when I explained that the Cartel's would not go away. With Safety, I explained that the dangers of breaking the law are not reasons for legalization, a case that Pro dropped. With Erosion of Liberties, I had an entire case revolving around how the right to do drugs is outweighed the loss of rights for non-smokers. My source showed that Cartel's actually used legalization to earn higher profits. They adapted the legalization to increase their funding (8). Pro claims that Cartel's will disappear because they won't have any funding, but another source claims that drugs make up less than half of all Cartel funding (10). Cartel's simply aren't affected by legalization in the long run (11). Legalization doesn't remove the black market. Even cigarettes have a massive black market (12).Pro claims that the majority of all crimes are done to get drugs, but with no source. A review of my source shows that crime didn't decrease (it actually increased) after legalization (8). For Pro's claim to be true, we must see at least some decrease, especially if "most" crimes are done for drugs.Pro's attack on my source is unwarranted. Saying "Con's DEA source is biased as fvck.." Pro simply attacks my source with no backing or counter source. My source is supported by 251 studies. Pro also claims that my source doesn't say what I claimed it said. A review:“... drug control laws have helped to decrease use of drugs among youth by over 50% since 2001." - me."... youth use of drugs such as MDMA/Ecstasy, LSD, and methamphetamine have decreased by more than 50 percent." - CDC.My CDC source does claim that positive tests for cocaine and meth is down 38 to 50% amoung adults, and drug use among workers is at a 20 year low.Pro's only explanation for all of my facts stated is "What caused the decrease in demand? Who fvcking knows." He does nothing to counter my facts. He then goes on to claim that education is likely the force at work in Colorado, and that he supports it. I will draw the voter's attention back to a claim I said I'd hold him to; "... in my scheme, I wouldn't educate kids the way Colorado's doing it."[10] http://tinyurl.com...[11] http://tinyurl.com...[12] http://tinyurl.com...Summary:Pro has not proven that Legalization is better than decreasing drug use. The benefits of decreasing drug use are far better.