All drugs should be legalized.

There are no victimless crimesMy argument will mostly consist of practical benefits that we would experience if drugs were to be legalized, and that the prohibition of drugs does a lot more harm than good, but I also believe philosophically that the government should not be in the business of regulating our personal lives regardless of the consequences. Government exists to protect individual rights, not restrict them, and although drug use often has a negative impact on people's lives, consenting adults should be allowed to do what they please. If that means they are going to ingest harmful substances, it should certainly be discouraged, but not prohibited, as they are not infringing on anyone else's individual rights. If we accept the notion that the government can ban anything that's harmful, what about alcohol? It's a drug like any other, and a fairly addicting one that is deadly to the liver, but we allow its use anyway.Quality ControlOne of the disadvantages of legalizing drugs is that we would likely see more drug use, as the incentive to avoid them is decreased, however this issue is outweighed by the fact that drug use would be a lot safer when legally regulated. Drugs will often be riddled with dangerous additives and toxins, and already dangerous drugs like methamphetamine and cocaine can become even more deadly. Prohibition of drugs doesn't eliminate them, it just drives the market underground where it can't be regulated, and even relatively safe drugs like marijuana are often riddled with toxins that make its consumption much more dangerous.Violence surrounding the drug industryIn the formal economy, the threat of the law generally prevents people from stealing and taking advantage of others, but you can't sue someone for selling you meth with 40% purity if that means admitting to a crime yourself, and the only way to respond to theft or gang violence is to respond with violence of your own. Drug traffickers will sometimes hire terrorist organizations to protect themselves, or directly attack competitors. It's an extremely primitive world, but we could drastically reduce, if not eliminate drug violence if we allowed this industry into the formal, regulated economy.Economic AdvantagesFormally taxing the drug industry would produce a substantial increase in tax revenue, and the government would save a lot of money if it didn't have to spend so much on the war on drugs. This in itself would obviously be a good thing, but it would also allow us to increase spending on drug education and rehabilitation if we decided to do so. When Portugal legalized drugs did implemented these sorts of policies, drug overdoses were dramatically reduced (1).Drugs aren't always bad, and we do not properly educate on them.The prohibition of cannabinoids and opiates causes a problem when people need them for medical reasons, and the dangers of many other drugs are completely overblown. Our culture is so eager to vilify and alienate drugs (even though the use of alcohol, which is just as much of a drug as cocaine, is completely acceptable) that it's gotten to the point where education on drugs consists of nothing more than propaganda and abstinence, when we should be primarily focusing on hard science and harm reduction. Many people are going to do drugs, often extremely harmful drugs, and we won't help them in any way if we keep repeating ourselves about how bad they are instead of teaching harm reduction, and on top of this, a lot of what we're teaching about drugs is completely false. A health teacher once taught me that LSD is an extremely addictive substance, which couldn't be farther from the truth. Until we legalize these drugs, we won't be able to reform our education system on this topic.(1) http://www.independent.co.uk...