Resolved: the United States Government's War on Drugs should be continued in it's entirety

Thank you, THEBOMB, for your response. I extend my first contention, which went unquestioned. 1+. Unhealthy My opponent claims that because illegal drugs are unhealthy, government must ban their production and use. However, it is not a valid role of government to protect us from bad choices; government serves to ensure that our rights to life, liberty, and pursuit happiness are not infringed upon by others [1]. If people which to eat unhealthy cheeseburgers, such is their choice. If they wish to drink unhealthy alcoholic beverages, it is their choice. If they wish to smoke, it is their choice, so long as they take precautions against the smoke. And so, if they wish to use marijuana, heroin, cocaine, or whatever else, it is their choice. Additionally, my opponent exaggerates the dangers of illegal drugs relative to currently legal drugs. Alcohol is considerably more dangerous than marijuana in almost all respects [2]. In fact, teens are currently choosing marijuana over alcohol and cigarettes; making marijuana illegal leads to more users of worse drugs [3]. 2+. Decreased Use (I combine this with 1+'s point about dropped use) My opponent is using many data points that are great lengths of time apart and concluding that any changes resulted from government policies, but this is a blatant case of assuming that correlation means causation. Drug use changes in response to a large number of things; a graph showing drug use over time would be infinitely more useful. Furthermore, when it comes to prohibition, we don't have all the facts. Because alcohol use was largely underground, we can't truly know just how much damage alcohol was doing. We should also look at the effects of legalization in other countries. In Portugal, for example, drug legalization lead to a major decrease in drug use over the course of ten years [7]. 3+. Crime To continue from the Prohibition, it lead to the rise of organized crime, such as Al Capone [4]. In the same vein, many gangs today draw large chunks of their revenue from the illegal drug trade [5]. Ending the drug war would allow law-abiding businesses to enter the drug market and sell drugs at a much lower price, using the courts to settle disputes instead of guns, and gang influence and violence would drop tremendously [Video 1]. http://www.youtube.com... Just look at this quote from an undercover narcotics officer: "I learned that not only did they not fear our war on drugs, they counted on it to increase the market price and to weed out the smaller, inefficient drug dealers. They found U.S. interdiction efforts laughable. The only U.S. action they feared was an effective demand reduction program. On one undercover tape-recorded conversation, a top cartel chief, Jorge Roman, expressed his gratitude for the drug war, calling it 'a sham put on for the American taxpayer' that was actually 'good for business'" [8]. The legalization itself will drop prices from the inflated black market prices, and the tax would not fully counteract that drop, so by my opponent's own contention, violence would drop "substantially." I acknowledge that DUIs, not violent crimes, would increase for marijuana, but marijuana has relatively no effect on driving skills compared to alcohol [6], so I would consider this a success. Regarding Patrick Murphy's quote, the most common drug that leads to abuse is alcohol, and it is currently legal. Few other drugs compare in their ability to incite violence. As for his claim about legalization, both my and my opponent's contentions prove him simply wrong. Finally, my opponent claims that even after legalization, black markets would develop. For one thing, a small black market is preferable to a very large black market. It is much easier to regulate an open market than a black market, but people will prefer the open market anyway because of the legal protections involved. Smuggling is expensive, and as long as the taxes and tariffs aren't astronomical, and our anti-smuggling security is at least decent, drugs will not be smuggled in. It's simple economics. 4+. International law Those treaties ask Congress to pass unconstitutional laws. In all cases, the Constitution must trump treaties. It was never right for Congress to enter those treaties in the first place; they had no vested authority to carry out the actions required. To preserve the Constitution, the United States must bow out and exit the treaty. The government's responsibility to its own people is far more important. 5+. Prison population My opponent has already pointed out that rising drug prices leads to higher crime, so he may not just turn around and say that lowering drug prices would have the same effect. Lower prices will decrease crime. Regarding the illegal drugs used by those arrested, I can't respond to this properly until I know which illegal drugs those were. My opponent claims that the end result would be more prisoners, but the opposite is true. With lower prices, fewer people would commit crimes for drug money, and children would no longer be caught up in the drug money of the gangs and cartels. Additionally, there would be no legal problems for people who voluntarily submit themselves to rehab and admit drug ownership so that they may actually be helped. 6+. Trafficking Again, my opponent claims that legalization would increase the price of drugs and make it more difficult to access drugs, which is almost laughably wrong on both accounts. There are currently already black markets focused on everybody, including children. However, children are not much of a market compared to the rest of the economy. Eliminating the rest of the black market would still cut down tremendously on black market activity, as people would buy their drugs in legal markets through proper economic channels. My opponent's analogy to robbery is flawed. Drug use is a victimless crime, while robbery is not. A legal drug market would involve completely voluntary exchanges in which no rights are harmed. A legal robbery market would require people to volunteer their houses to be robbed; that would get nowhere fast. In conclusion, the current War on Drugs primarily serves to curtail our rights as Americans and provide ample opportunities for drug gangs to rake in extreme profits while inciting violence, all in the name of keeping us safe from ourselves. I say, good riddance. Good luck with your response, THEBOMB. 1. The Declaration of Independence 2. http://www.saferchoice.org... 3. http://www.saferchoice.org... 4. http://en.wikipedia.org... 5. http://www.naturalnews.com... 6. http://norml.org... 7. http://www.forbes.com... 8. http://en.wikipedia.org...