All drugs should be legalized for both medical and recreational use.

This is my first debate, so I apologize in advance if I accidentally break any rules. :) I am NOT arguing that people should not be discouraged from using drugs. 1.Drug use is a victimless crime; people should be allowed to put what they want in their bodies. 2.Legalizing drugs would save people from going to prison. 3.Legalizing drugs would make it so that people can buy high quality drugs, and have the proper dosages so they don't hurt themselves as much. 4.The money from legalizing drugs, and from not wasting it on stopping people from getting drugs, could be used for more important things. 5.If drugs are legal it becomes easier to get funding for research on them, which may eventually lead to drugs without negative side effects. (1)http://www.policechiefmagazine.org... (This link also has some ideas for con, which I'm going to try to address now.) 1.The legalization of drugs would increase use, lead to more experimentation by youth, and exacerbate the existing deleterious effects that drugs have on society. The thing is, people that are bad enough to need drugs can already access alcohol and cigarettes. Many currently illegal drugs are less harmful, and might even work as replacements, which could easily outweigh the negative effects of the few that might start on the "hard" drugs. 2.They are of the opinion that government subsidization of addicts would have crippling effects on the economy. But now that money would be going to help the drug users, instead of sending them to prison. 3.They also feel that legalization would help to create a large black market for drugs. There already IS a large black market for drugs. If a legal source became available, why would people go to the risk of getting drugs from an illegal source? 4.Drug dealers and hardcore addicts would not suddenly become productive, law-abiding members of society. Dealers will still be involved in crime and violence and that users will still need to support themselves by engaging in criminal activity. If the drug dealers lose their customers, there is a possibility that they'll just give up on illegal work on become productive members of society. If not, they just find some other illegal work. No gain, but no loss either. The users will buy their drugs from legal sources or they'll stay with the illegal source. Possible gain, no possible loss. Also, if drugs become legal, it will be easier to find rehab and they might become productive. 5.Basically, they believe that the legalization of drugs would lead to increases, not reductions, in crime because there would be more addicts and because of the aforementioned black market. I've already addressed the concerns of the possible black market, so I'll focus on more addicts. First of all, if all drugs become legal, people will know exactly what's in their drugs and the proper dosages, so they'll be less likely to become hooked. Also, since people could freely talk about their drug use, they could find better ways to deal with their addiction. Especially since people could help them completely give it up. 6.Statistics show that drug prevention initiatives, drug awareness curricula in schools, and drug treatment programs are working. They point to the fact that there are fewer addicts today than there were 20 years ago. And that is wonderful! And legalizing drugs will have no effect on those programs. Actually, more money could be spent on those programs after it stops being wasted on sending people to prison.