The War on Drugs is a failure

This will be the first time I have ever found myself in the position of arguing FOR the War on Drugs (WoD). My screaming liberalism and hedonistic epicurean principles normally forbid me taking such a position. However, in this case, I am impatient to complete my third debate on this website, and be awarded voting rights. So. But, personally, I really doubt that my partner and I are very far apart on this issue. This really should be considered an example of Devil’s Advocacy. First of all, I would like to point out that, as I indicated, I hold the opinion that drug laws within the US should be relaxed significantly. This is especially true in the case of marijuana, and drinking age limits that have been set above the age at which a person can legally become a soldier or a voter. Why should a young man be permitted to potentially die in battle, without being also able to drink in honor of his fallen comrades? This is nonsense: if we can die for our country, we should be able to drink to our country, However, this should not mean that the “War on Drugs” should be regarded as an abject failure, or even discontinued. My take on this subject is that we should modify and focus our efforts to restrict dangerous intoxicants in a more intelligent and effective way. I feel that current policy does not accomplish this: we have a wasteful, inconsistently applied system that does not work as well as it should. This aside, it should not be called a “failure” and simply done away with. It should be mended – not ended. Entering this debate, these following important concerns arise for me – concerns that must be answered convincingly before I could accept my partner’s premise, that the War on Drugs has been a “failure. ” There was a time before the WoD was implemented. What was life like then? Was there an unacceptable level of human misery being caused by drug abuse? Most of my concerns with abandoning the WoD has to do with very dangerous intoxicants, especially heroin and cocaine. There are good reasons to believe that, if legal, many more Americans would begin to consume these dangerous toxins. Are there sound arguments that demonstrate that these Americans would not be harmed by this usage? Are there sound arguments that those Americans who choose not to use heroin and cocaine would not become victims of criminal acts perpetrated by those addicts who have become desperate to obtain their drug? Can an argument be presented that would demonstrate that our hospitals and health care system would not become clogged (and more expensive) as a result of increased rates of drug usage? It is reasonable to suppose that increased drug usage in the US would lead to more drug exports from developing countries. This increase in exports could lead to greater profits from drug cartels, which may then become strong enough to destabilize the nations that they operate in. Would Americans like to know that their money is going to these drug cartels? Can we assume that these drug cartels are ethical businessmen, who can be trusted to provide safe products? This is an important consideration, because these cartels will be the entities that first stake the largest claims to the new, legal, American drug markets that would emerge as a result of the WoD being dismissed as a “failure. ” These criminal, and often murderous, drug cartels will prosper if the WoD is ended. I argue that many people who might otherwise use illegal drugs choose not to do so only because they are illegal. If addicted, these people might become far less productive citizens. Should we have been allowing them to become addicted instead? Nations such as Afghanistan offer us a model of what a nation might look like - without such efforts as the WoD. Is this model better than the American system? I think that it is not. It may be argued that “we should be allowed to make our own mistakes. I do not need the government to stop me from using heroin. ” However, we may very much want the government to stop our babysitter from taking bath salts just before watching our children. We may want laws that protect those who do not use drugs personally from becoming endangered by those who do. To say that the WoD has been a failure is to suggest that it has not achieved its stated goals. I cannot agree with thispremise; rates of illegal drug use, responsible and reasonable drug restrictions, and limits on the murderous activities of drug cartels have occurred as a direct result of the WoD. All of these concerns can be placed into three neat stacks: The WoD has limited the negative effects that drug abuse might have on non-drug users, and those who use drugs responsibly. Benefits to the WoD can be found in public safety, crime rates, and health care costs One effect of the WoD has been to weaken the dangerous drug cartels, which might otherwise have oppressed and murdered many innocent people as a result of increasing their power The WoD has prevented many potential addicts from beginning to use dangerous narcotics. It may be argued that these people deserve to suffer for their choices, but it nevertheless remains reasonable to suggest that they are productive society members today only because they did not want to go to jail My position, then, is that although the WoD is clearly an example of imperfect policy, it has achieved some modest successes. It cannot, therefore, qualify as a “failure,” however slight those successes have been.