drug legalization

Thank you, jstudt76. I will first defend my negation case, then I will construct counter-arguments. My opponent spews out an array of arguments, of which none are referenced, hence they are allbare assertions [1]. I often respond merely in presumption that they are true, but since I have pointed out that nothing is referenced, and therefore my opponent’s entire case is logically fallacious,my opponent has failed to affirm the resolution. Also, my opponent’s walls-of-text are also very hard to follow (as I am sure you had trouble with, too), so please consider penalising him/her on conduct for being difficult to follow. Negation Case P1: People fear the legal and social consequences of illicit drugs My opponent drops this premise. P2: Drugs are very dangerous My opponent concedes that cocaine and heroin are “bad”. There is not mention of scopolamine, so this is dropped. A1: Under 25, brain has not fully developed My opponent concedes that before the age of 25, the brain is not fully developed yet. My opponent counter-argues that sex “has an affect on the brain”. There are a few problems with this counter-argument: 1) It is unreferenced, therefore it is a bare assertion [1]. What this means is that my opponent has provided no sources to support the claim that sex does have an “affect” on the brain 2) Secondly, my opponent has failed to demonstrate, to the severity I have, that sex causes serious damage to people under the age of 25. Thus, my opponent’s analogy misaligns 3) Furthermore, even *if* my opponent did show that people having sex under the age of 25 was harmful, this does not null or permit the dangers of taking the drugs I listed. It is entirely possible you could negate all drugs being legalised *and* negate young people having sex *at the same time* -- mutual exclusion is not a necessity here A similar line of argument is applicable to my opponent’s claims that we “shouldn’t do anything [if dangerous drugs aren’t legal]”. My argument is that *seriously* harmful things should be illegal, not just “anything harmful”. Furthermore, my opponent argues that: if people are educated about the issues, then they will be in a position to make a good decision. This contradicts my line of argument, under this heading. I have demonstrated with statistics and facts (in which all of my demonstration, statistics and facts have been dropped), that people under 25 are *not* in a good enough position to make these very dangerous choices. In fact, there are *plenty* of institutions in the U.S alone that deal with raising awareness about the dangerous nature of drugs (I will only list a few) [2] [3] [4] [5]. Yet despite having all these institutions disseminating information and raising awareness, we still have all the drug abuse and addiction statistics that I listed in my previous round! A2: Drugged Driving Completely dropped. Please extend my arguments. A3: Effect on Society My opponent drops my statistic that showed for every $1 spent in curbing drug use (e.g. War on Drugs), $4 to $7 is saved. My opponent also drops my argument that people commit homicides at *six times* the rate than those looking for money to buy drugs. This pre-emptively *countered* my opponent’s argument that the cost of drugs is the main cause of drug related crime. My opponent claims that the War on Drugs is a “losing battle”. On the contrary, if my opponent had read my arguments and statistics under this title, he/she would see that the cost of the War on Drugs is a mere fraction the cost of illicit drug use costs the United States ($15 billion versus $193 billion). My opponent claims that “we spend upwards of 2 billion dollars a year on the so called drug war”, and despite the figure being actually higher, my opponent’s claim is completely unreferenced (and surprise, surprise: it is wrong). Hence, in order to prevent spending *a lot more money* in dealing with illicit drugs, the War on Drugs is far, far cheaper, and thus should be preferred. My opponent also mentions that education would be better than continuing the War on Drugs. I refer you back to the bottom of A1, wherein I show that there are *plenty* of drug information institutions that already do this, yet the United States still spends $193 billion a year in dealing with illicit drug use! I emphasise that this is with these drugs being *illegal!* My opponent mentions gang wars/cartels being a problem, but this is merely a statement and not an argument with statistics and references (unlike mine). So, there is no weight to this line of argument. My opponent even asks, “How many lives would we save if these cartels were put out of business?”That is a very good question, of which my opponent does not know the answer to. herefore it purely speculation and has no impact. My opponent says that prisons are “full of offenders”, but again, no evidence is provided – another bare assertion [1]. Counter-arguments Legalisation of Cannabis, MDMA etc. I will rely on the fact that cocaine, heroin and scopolamine are dangerous enough that I can negate the resolution based on these. Remember: I do not have to prove that every drug should be illegal. If I show that just *one* drug should not be legal, I win this debate. So, I will let these less harmful drugs slide, for the purposes of this debate. Individual Choice Why should this be the case? What is so impactful that *all* drugs should be available to all people? You see, my opponent gives this line of argument no weight, hence there is no reason to buy this line of argument. Instead, my opponent merely states over and over: “it should be the choice of the individual”. In other words, my opponent gives no reason/evidence as to why this should be the case, he merely asserts it, and we know all about bare assertions by now [1]. Regulating drugs My opponent writes: “If [cocaine and heroin] were legal they could be regulated. There could be places to get clean drugs and clean needles so as to cut down on std's and other diseases.” Again, this is a bare assertion, as this is purely speculating without providing any evidence to support the claim [1]. Use drugs to escape reality Why can they not escape reality in a safer way? Have you ever heard of someone dying from drug overdose by reading a fantasy novel? My opponent’s ridiculous argument is that we should legalise *all drugs* because people like to escape from reality. I will trust the fair-mindedness of the audience to see the folly with this. Pills are more dangerous Even if pills were more dangerous, it is not true that we can only ban one and not the other. Even *if* this were proven true (and weren’t another bare assertion), this is a false dichotomy, in that my opponent argues with the assumption that there are only two options, when in reality there are more than two [6]. References [1] http://fallacies.findthedata.com... [2] http://www.dare.org... [3] http://www.elks.org... [4] http://www.narconon.org... [5] http://www.drugabuse.gov... [6] http://c2.com...