Kleptin Brand "Pick Your Own Debate"!!!

I shall be taking the Pro side of this debate. The first contention I would like to make is that people have ownership of their own bodies. I hope my opponent will agree that this is a fairly non-controversial position, as advocacy of out-and-out slavery has fallen out of favor as far as political philosophy goes. From that, I will further contend that because the use of drugs qua use of drugs only has effects on the person using the drugs, my opponent, if he agrees with my initial contention, cannot oppose the legality of the use of drugs without further qualification which demonstrates some sort of substantive harm done to others. With a justification based on individual rights for the legality of drugs established, I will move to consequentialist reasons for legalization. 1. Prohibition drives the trade to the black market, changing it from the realm of legitimate businessmen to that of gangsters, dramatically increasing the violence involved. It is a well-established fact that black markets are more violent than legal ones. The major reason for this is that once a trade is driven underground by the government, it becomes very difficult to resolve disputes peacefully. When the government is actively seeking the arrest of all involved parties, it is difficult to have a fair, public arbitration process, therefore leading to disputes being resolved by violence instead. Further, the government's relegating the trade to criminals and gangsters quite obviously leads to a tendency towards violence to begin with. 2. Prohibition drives the trade to the black market, making quality a non-concern of the sellers. In a black market, competition may be fierce (even violent, as suggested above), but because of the underground nature of the market, this does not have the normal marketplace effect of improving quality and reducing prices. Advertising can only be done on a word-of-mouth level, and largely is the initiative of the buyers rather than the sellers (who do not wish to be found out by the government authorities). Because of this, the normal marketplace checks on poor producers are mostly ineffectual and poor quality products can continue to be sold at very high prices. Many overdoses are the result of impurities and ambiguous potency information, neither of which would be a problem in a legal market where drugs would be made in laboratory environments and have proper labeling. 3. Prohibition, because it causes sellers to go underground and largely shift from legitimate businessmen to gangsters, is a financial boon to gangs, the mafia, and other criminal elements of society. A large amount of the USA's current gang problem can be related back to the War on Drugs, as most gangs make the vast majority of their income in the drug trade. The drug trade is easy money, so long as a gang can maintain its position. This is one of the main causes of the extreme territorial nature of modern gangs. The great amount of income gives gangs many advantages they did not have before. First and foremost, it makes a life as a gangster much more appealing to the poor urban kids who fill its ranks. Second, it makes much more powerful weaponry available to gangs, by allowing them to afford such. 4. Prohibition clogs up our prisons with non-violent criminals and makes them into violent criminals. It is no accident that the leader of the international drug war, the United States, has the largest prison population in the world. A large many of them, if not a majority, are in for drug-related offenses, and many of those are mere possessors. These non-violent criminals are placed in jail for several years with hardened criminals - murderers, rapists, robbers, etc. And what do they learn during their stay in prison? How to kill and harm. And when they get out, they are handicapped in the job market due to the felony on their record. Many opportunities close to them. So what happens? They turn to crime, and perhaps this time it will be violent crime, rather than mere non-violent drug offenses. It is rare in the social sciences that we are given a sort of experiment. The American experience with Alcohol Prohibition, however, is a great historical case to demonstrate the above stated principles. During Prohibition, alcohol was still sold in the USA. But not by bartenders - by wildcats. And what happened? The trade became violence, dangerous, and profitable. Since Prohibition has ended, how many alcohol gangs can be named?