Resolved: Tobacco use should be banned in the United States

Time to respond to everything. Prison populations I never mentioned this, but it is important to note that my opponent’s statistics prove the anti-prohibition case. If 16% of people in jail are there for drug related charges--1% for use, 15% for trafficking, dealing, or manufacturing--that means, if drugs were legal, we would reduce the prison population by 16%. With each inmate costing $31,000 to the taxpayer each year, reducing the prison population by 16% sounds like a good deal.[1] By adding yet another drug law, we would be increasing the enormous cost of overincarceration to unacceptable levels. Drug policy and drug use This is the most important part of the debate. If my opponent loses this point, his entire case falls apart. My opponent cites two extremely sketchy sources, the only valid ones being the DEA (conflict of interest) and the Rand corp study. It should be noted that the economic theories outlined in the previous round put a doubt into my opponent’s data. As is often said in economics, any good theory has a fact, and any good fact has a theory. As I have undermined the theory behind prohibition reducing drug use, my opponent’s facts are essentially useless. Regardless, they are untrue. To simply say “drug use is falling” while at the same time enforcement is increasing (and the drop is due to the enforcement) is simply an ad hoc ergo prompter hoc fallacy. As I have previously noted, tobacco use has been continually falling, even during the time period my opponent specified. Further, some illegal drugs, like marijuana, has seen use increase since 2001, whereas other drugs, like cocaine, are still relatively uncommon.[2] These two facts lead us to a different conclusion: social factors, rather than enforcement, drive drug use. Marijuana use has increased despite increased enforcement efforts because it is now socially acceptable. Tobacco use has fallen despite no enforcement because it is no longer socially acceptable. Both of these destroy my opponent’s claims. Further, countries that focus on treatment rather than enforcement see better results when it comes to reducing drug use.[3] In fact, as the US has continued to prohibit drug use while other countries have moved towards more liberal policies, we have been ranked number one! Yay … Oh, wait, number one in drug use.[4] Boo! Even the National Academies of Science, the most prestigious scientific organization in the world, agrees with me: Using the marijuana decriminalization in the 1970s as evidence, they find the reduction of enforcement and penalties for drug use did not increase use.[5] We should compare our current regime of tobacco use to our drug use trends. Marijuana use has increased in recent years, with no change in cocaine use rates. Whereas tobacco use has fallen dramatically. This leads us to a simple conclusion: prohibition doesn’t work. The theories don’t show it, the facts don’t show it. Prohibition and deaths My opponent offers zero rebuttal to this. He essentially says this: Oh, my opponent says prohibition would make drugs more harmful and lead to MORE deaths. But it is bad now, so this outweighs it. That makes no sense. I argued it would be *worse* than it is right now, meaning if it is already bad currently, prohibition would make it that much worse. Indeed, evidence from the war on drugs lends credence to my position. Even when scholars claim drug prevalence falls, the harms the drugs have on society increase because the drug becomes less safe and less regulated. Since the onset of the war on drugs, “we have seen dramatic increases in drugrelated emergency department visits and drug-related deaths coinciding with this period of increased enforcement.”[6] Other scholars argue that drug prohibition “[marginalizes] drug users and reduce opportunities to minimize health risks applying public health measures,”[7] which makes drugs more dangerous and can be described as “a war on public health.” This, along with the previous argument, leads to two disturbing outcomes. First, if I win the use argument, tobacco harms will stay about the same--or increase, if the economic theories I presented are accepted--and second, if I win the death argument, prohibition would *increase* the number of deaths and increase the costs on society. As my opponent has effectively dropped this argument, and he cannot respond to it last round, I essentially win this debate. Harm reduction I will tie in first my R2 arguments, an argument that my opponent drops. He only says, “shouldn’t we do something?” The answer is yes: Let the market continue to opt for safer products. As I have noted, prohibition isn’t really doing something anyway, it just makes the problem worse. My opponent claims many of my policies are irrelevant because I have to defend the status quo. This showcases my opponent’s ignorance of the law: 28 states have already banned smoking in enclosed public spaces.[8] I am defending the status quo by extending the laws the majority of states already have to every other state. It should also be noted that the majority of harm reduction strategies--taxes on tobacco products, images on the packages, anti-smoking campaigns, and other policies have already significantly reduced tobacco use. Indeed, the reduction in tobacco consumption due to the strategies I have outlined have saved eight million lives, reduced the number of lung cancer deaths by 800,000 all in 50 years (close to the amount of time the drug war was declared).[9] On the other hand, prohibitionist policies have led to an increase in illicit drug deaths since 1999.[10] The number of opiate deaths have increased since the 1970s.[11] It is clear that harm reduction, if you are worried about the costs of tobacco, offers a solution to the drug problem. Prohibition makes the problem worse. If use is falling already, why ban it and get all of the negative externalities of prohibition? My opponent’s logic makes zero sense. Environment A huge amount of my opponent’s case was about global pollution. My opponent drops all of this for domestic littering statistics. First, as tobacco use is falling due to harm reduction, harm reduction will reduce the amount of littering even if we do not ban tobacco. Second, while tobacco does have some inherent environmental costs, it has environmental benefits, too. The death of millions of European bees is a huge environmental problem, and the declining bee population has been called “the biggest foreboding danger of all facing humans is the loss of the global honeybee population.”[12] But research has suggested tobacco could help save the bee population. Tobacco plants carry chemicals that kill parasites that have killed many bee populations, and when bees fertilize tobacco plants, the parasites in the population begin to die.[13] Genetically engineered tobacco plants have been shown to kill insidious environmental toxins, too.[14] Tobacco has some effects on our domestic environment, to be sure, but my opponent only focused on the harms. As tobacco could prevent the largest impending environmental disaster--the death of the bee population--destroying the tobacco industry may not be a wise solution to the littering problem. Harm reduction strategies will eventually minimize the problem--and as prohibition doesn’t change usage rates, marginalizing drug users probably won’t solve the problem. Second hand smoke My opponent makes this odd argument: “[The] role of government is to better the lives of the people. Therefore in a cost/benefit analysis vote Pro.” This, if anything, supports the Con case. I have shown that prohibition would cause crime, make drugs worse, marginalize drug users, and do little to reduce use. While second hand smoke is a real issue, continuing the harm reduction policies would reduce tobacco use to a rate where second hand smoke wouldn’t even be an issue. My opponent’s responses to harm reduction has been almost nil, which undermines my opponent’s case. Economy My opponent seems to accept my calculations if use does not decrease. As I have given many more reasons to believe use would NOT fall--and my opponent has offered only a barebones rebuttal to that point--it is safe to assume that the economic costs of banning tobacco would outweigh the benefits. Whether or not we use my opponent’s calculations in R2 or upper-end calculations, the costs are likely to outweigh the benefits. Conclusion My opponent’s entire case is based on a false dichotomy: ban tobacco now and eliminate all tobacco problems or we will all drown in costs and pain. As I have demonstrated, there is another way: continue with our successful harm reduction policies that have halved tobacco use in fifty years. We will half it again and again if we continue forward. My opponent’s solution, prohibition, makes the problem worse. It does little to reduce use while increasing crime, the potency of the drug, and marginalizing drug users. Banning tobacco use and production is a terrible idea. 1. http://www.nytimes.com... 2. http://www.drugabuse.gov... 3. http://thedea.org... 4. http://www.cbsnews.com... 5. http://www.nap.edu... 6. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov... 7. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov... 8. https://en.wikipedia.org... 9. http://www.nbcnews.com... 10. http://www.cdc.gov... 11. http://aic.gov.au... 12. http://www.globalresearch.ca... 13. http://www.independent.co.uk... 14. http://www.sciencedaily.com...