Drug Legalization

First, I'll address the question he asks of me, "what makes marijuana different from other drugs? " The answer is the level of addictiveness, and how that addictiveness affects people's free will. But I'll go deeper into that in the morals section. 1A) Money and Lives. My opponent states in section 5, "I would not support legalizing homicide because it costs money, because homicide affects others. " I have the feeling that even if the drug war only cost $10,000 a year, my opponent would be against it on principle, just like he is against murder on principle. If this is not the case, I request my opponent tell me just how much cost is acceptable for the drug war? Regarding the lives lost, the number of dead in Mexico was not addressed because I didn't have the character count to address it like I did for the US deaths. This can also largely be ignored, as this merely shows that there is a wrong way to fight drug usage, it does not show that legalizing is the only viable alternative. I have already pointed out the Netherlands, Sweden, and Japan, all nations that spend a great deal of money on fighting hard drugs, and have been very successful with it. 1B) Society My opponent says, "Killing everyone wouldn't work, as the government would intervene and you would have to go underground…" Since the government already intervenes in murder cases, this would be nothing new to them, and so not a new cost of doing business for them. My opponent also states, "Legalizing drugs does not mean legalizing murder. If anything, violence would go down. " One of the things about murder, is that it is an individual crime. If a member of MS13 commits murder, you can't just go arrest any MS13 gang member, you have to get the one that pulled the trigger (and any that helped). This means that the individuals working the stores are not going to be the same pulling the trigger, so there is no need for them to hide themselves, nor their shops. I will restate, gangs already show that they are willing to kill their competition. My opponent has shown nothing that they will change their ways because drugs become legal. When it comes to individual crime, my opponent says (in his point 6), "this is a classic example of correlation and causation. Does being high cause you to murder someone, or is it that people who get high also are more likely to be criminals? Black people commit more crimes, but that doesn't mean that their skin color tells them to commit crime. It may be a simple case of correlation. " This is just wasting my character space. Drugs affect the functioning of a person's brain (while they are high), anywhere from altering their mood, the distorting their senses, to blacking out and doing things that they don't even remember. Since drugs alter one's ability to make rational decisions (the degree depends on the drug, some are so minor effects, that they don't really matter) they increase the chance of irrational decisions. We also come into the effects of addiction, and how addiction drives people to feed that addiction (often through crime), though I will bring that back up in the moral section. 2) Success My opponent makes the argument, "If we prohibit marijuana and can only change usage by less than 5%, how can we expect to change cocaine usage by any substantial amount either? " I would like to point him back to one of my sources from round 2 [1]. Going to Sweden, we can see a 94% decrease in Amphetamine use from their peak in 1959 to 2003 (from 6.4% to 0.4%), with more than 70% of that drop happening in the first 6 years. This is solid proof that it is possible to effectively fight drug usage. My opponent even goes on to broadly admit this, saying, "There may be more effective ways of fighting drugs," even though he follows up with questioning if we really want to do that. This is just more evidence, that its success and cost don't mean a thing since my opponent is not against the effectiveness of the drug war, but against the principle of it. 3) Morality Since my opponent says, "I admit that it was a bit of a mistake to say that we are slaves of the government. " My points criticizing his use of that term don't need to be countered, and his counters don't need to be addressed. My opponent clearly says twice, "The government is supposed to protect you…" clearly, many hard drugs are unhealthy for you, and their addictive properties make them a hard poison to kick and some are extremely painful to kick [2]. And considering that thousands of Americans die from overdoses each year (from my opponent's R2 [1] source), it isn't hard to come to the conclusion that preventing people from drugs is protecting them from those drugs (as my opponent said is the responsibility of government). We can go further to see that addiction (especially powerful addictions that have nasty withdrawal symptoms) takes away the user's free choice and free will. We can see with cigarettes that many people want to quit, and try to quit, but their addiction causes urges too powerful for their conscious mind to fight [3]. The same is true with many hard drugs, like Heroin, Crack, and Meth. Once addicted, one's free will to simply quit when one wants is compromised by the chemical alterations done to the brain [4]. As such, it is needed to protect both people, and their freedoms. In conclusion, keeping drugs illegal has been shown that, if done correctly, can work, and is morally responsible to protect people, as what PRO said was the reason of government. I'll fully admit that the US government is currently doing things the wrong way, and that needs to change, but legalizing is not the answer and won't solve anything. I'll now pass this back to my opponent for his closing round. [1] . http://www.unodc.org... [2] . http://addictions.about.com... [3] . http://www.simplysearch4it.com... [4] . http://science.howstuffworks.com...