Drug Legalization

Re: IntroductionThett opens his round by misdirecting with a false claim:"The resolution is only affirmed if legalization is proven to be the ideal solution."I only have to prove that legalization is morally and/or pragmatically preferable to the alternatives, not that legalization is the best way to resolve all of the problems stemming from prohibition.Throughout his round, Thett fallaciously attempts to utilize my personal political leanings (libertarianism) to discredit my arguments, which in fact have no explicit relevance to the discussion. I have referred to the application of United States law/theory as-written and as it has been applied by various courts throughout American history, at which no point did we ever live under a libertarian framework. Re: States RightsThett presents a "majority rule" argument which has nothing to do with state's rights. He suggests that majority opinion is the basis for legitimizing government policy. Con ignores 1) a history wherein a majority of persons have agreed with policies that proved to be ineffective and often morally repugnant; 2) the impact government and institutionalized norms have on framing majority opinion; and 3) that U.S. government was specifically structured to prevent the tyranny of the majority, as explained by James Madison in Federalist Paper No. 51.Thett's claim that nobody wants to legalize drugs is contradicted by his very own citation, which demonstrates that anywhere from 19% to 55% of Americans, depending on the drug in question, think other drugs besides marijuana should be legal or would not be opposed to legalization. Re: Usage and CostsWhile Thett's proposal of market theory is correct, it is only relevant if the availability of drugs would significantly increase upon legalization. I will prove that's untrue. I've already proven that prohibition has been a failure and drugs are readily available. Despite increased policing and money spent on the Drug War, the cost of illegal drugs has declined over the years [1]. Drugs have also gotten more dangerous, as producers look to reduce risk by shipping stronger doses in smaller batches [2,3]. Unregulated, people do not know what they are consuming and how much.Anyone with Internet access can order illegal drugs from customer-reviewed vendors on the "deep web." Johns Hopkins professor of computer science, Matthew Green, notes "The idea of a [darknet market] is something we're probably never going to be free of, as long as the mail system exists to actually deliver the products... I can imagine a world where major drug cartels run them directly, or indirectly, which would make it awfully hard for U.S. law enforcement to arrest the operators [4]." There are many resources that explain how to utilize and purchase drugs off the dark-web [5, 6] and detail how easy it is to get away with. One article describes it as "safe, easy and boring" [7]. These systems are not impenetrable, but U.S. authorities cannot stifle this billion-dollar trade. Many household items work as drugs, and there are tutorials on how to make drugs with legal products online [8, 9]. Thett advocates for the decriminalization of drugs, which like legalization would lower the cost of drugs. Later on I will detail how legalization would keep costs the same or higher than deregulation. For now let's discuss how economist Jeffrey A. Miron at Harvard University has thoroughly debunked Thett's claim that legalization increased exports or decreased price after the legalization of opium in China. "After controlling for pre-existing trends, there is little effect of legalization on opium exports. The results in column (1) indicate that exports from India to China were higher post-legalization. The results in column (2), which control for war periods, the price of rice, and population, are similar. The results in columns (3) and (4), however, show that after controlling for a linear or quadratic trend, the estimated impact of legalization is either small and insignificantly positive or small and insignificantly negative" [10].Miron's analysis concludes "China's legalization of opium in 1858 was not associated with a perceptible increase in opium consumption... the export data fails to provide even a hint that prohibition had reduced consumption" [11].Consider that in virtually every study/comparison, marijuana is deemed 'safe' for consumption while harder drugs are not [12]. The fact that more people in Colorado now smoke weed upon legalization, does not necessarily mean the number of people who use hard drugs would increase to the same extent upon legalization. Many people who accept the minimal risks of marijuana would not accept the risks of harder drugs, even without legal penalty. Furthermore, Thett hasn't explained how decriminalization is preferable to legalization in this regard. Next, Thett complains about the high cost drug users have on society. If Thett can argue that it's only due to current status quo policies that the Drug War has been such an abysmal and problematic failure, then we must acknowledge that it's only due to current status quo policies that society has been unfairly saddled with the issue of detrimental drug abuse. Policies can be amended to alleviate this burden, and society can promote other standards that protect people's rights, while simultaneously encouraging smart choices. One of the most obvious examples is to allow employers the legal right to continue drug testing their employees. Failed drug tests are the reason many people do not get hired, and avoid drug use upon hire. Thett ignores the routine method governments use as a method of deterrence: taxation. According to the US National Library of Medicine, "The evidence strongly supports increasing cigarette prices through tobacco taxation as a powerful strategy for achieving major reductions in smoking behavior" [13]. It also collects significant revenue for the State.Re: Legalization vs. DecriminalizationLegalization would allow the government to extract money from taxing the producers and consumers of drugs. Additionally, federal and/or state governments may assume direct control over who the drug producers are, where they produce, how much they produce, and what their methods are (i.e. through farming or chemical composition regulations). This type of regulation promotes safe consumption, and allows the tax payers to extract revenue from the widespread, illegal practice.With legalization, drugs would be produced and sold on a commercial basis. They would become standardized products, and companies that sold dangerous and addictive products would do so under several legal constraints, such as liability and negligence law. Further, there would be strict regulation and licensing requirements like other businesses. As a result, there would be fewer options than compared to a simply decriminalized market. If Thett wants to keep the cost of drugs high, he would support legalization over decriminalization. Under decriminalization, there are no government restrictions or regulations on production processes, and because of this costs and prices fall as drugs reach the market sooner. In legalized systems, government control businesses with criminal codes. Laws regulate unsafe practices. For example legalized prostitution in Nevada requires regular health checks and registration of health status. This makes dangerous practices safer, one of the primary arguments for abortion remaining legal.Thett's supposition that the FDA could not figure out how to regulate drugs is a completely baseless and unsubstantiated claim that must be dropped. He's failed to explain how or why they couldn't regulate additional drugs the way they already regulate legal ones.Re: PortugalMy opponent misquotes me in an attempt to convince the audience I have been misleading. Nowhere in the last round did I claim that Portugal legalized drugs. In fact, I specified they decriminalized drugs not once, but twice. It is abundantly clear that my opponent's tactics rely primarily on manipulative rhetoric.My argument was that decriminalization in Portugal has led to less crime, less disease and less death. Furthermore, I showed that decriminalization led to more people seeking treatment for drug addiction. Both of these results are completely relevant to the lack of criminalization, which applies to both decriminalization and legalization. Thett argues that decriminalization allows for useful penalties, such as mandatory drug rehab or community service. You can aboslutely penalize drug users in the same ways IF they are convicted of another crime, such as aggressive behavior or driving while intoxicated.Re: Medicinal DrugsCon seems to go on an irrelevant moral tangent regarding people's personal decisions.Nobody said legalization necessarily means over the counter usage. Legalization means the legal sale of, which can rightfully include various forms of regulation. For example Oxycontin is legal but not completely unregulated. Legalization encourages regulation; deregulation (as its name implies) does not. Legalization is safer and makes drugs more expensive.One of the worst harms of criminalization is that it stifles the research and development of various drugs as legitimate medicine. Re: My Case on AlcoholThett has completely failed to prove that alcohol is safer than other drugs. He wrongly claims that alcohol is only more dangerous BECAUSE it is legal, which is unabashedly false. Alcohol encourages aggression and violence by disrupting normal brain function in areas of the brain that promote aggression [14, 15, 16, 17]. There is no evidence to indicate that other drugs encourage aggression in the same way. The majority violence that correlates with drugs specifically derives from the criminalization of drugs - namely the associated gang and cartel violence, which would largely cease under legalization. SOURCES: http://tinyurl.com...